If you follow junior cyclocross through the UCI calendar, you see almost none of this. The first six weeks of the American season are club series, weeknight races and regional cups, and the junior racing inside them is deeper in some parts of the country than anything the Northeast has put on so far.

All ages are cyclocross racing ages for 2026–27. Age coverage varies sharply by region — see the note at the end.

Mid-Atlantic: the biggest junior fields in the country

Virginia and Maryland are running junior fields that dwarf everyone else’s. Vanish Cross in Leesburg (Sep 13, 396 racers) and Hyattsville CX in Maryland (Sep 20, 433 racers) each fielded four separate junior categories per gender, with 13 to 23 riders in each.

Two programs are doing the heavy lifting: Baltimore Youth Cycling and Rock Creek Velo, with Mid-Atlantic Devo supplying the sharp end.

Vanish Cross — Leesburg, VA (Sep 13)

In the open fields: Mid-Atlantic Devo went 1-2 in Men Cat 3 Intermediate — Nolan Sands, 16, and Ryder Newell, 16. Olive Benitez, 13, won Women Cat 4 Intermediate on top of her junior win, and Naomi Harcum, 13, won Women Cat 4/5 Beginner.

Hyattsville CX — Hyattsville, MD (Sep 20)

Ryder Newell, 16, won Men Cat 3 Intermediate outright. Maks Roma-Shtylla, 15, was second in Men Cat 5 Beginner, a 44-rider field, and third in the junior U19 race.

Pacific Northwest: Portland is the biggest show in the country

Portland Trophy Cup — 513 racers on September 8, 487 on September 15. The Junior Open field alone drew 37 and 33.

And one team owns it. Team Booger filled the junior podium and then went out and won the open races too.

Jack Abel won an Open 1/2 field at 17. Johnie Hogue won a 63-rider Open 3/4 at 16. And then all three — Abel, Hogue and Filer — flew east and raced Rochester the following weekend, where Abel was fourth in the UCI junior race and Hogue rode the Cat 3 field.

Corn Cross — Boring, OR (Sep 13): junior fields split finely by age — Luka Dedrick (11-12), Dylan Glazer (13-14, Team Booger), Garett Hawes (15-16, Corvallis Junior Cycling), Nicolas Rinaldi Ceroni (9-10), Phoebe Hogue (Junior Women 11-12), Sunny Wittreich (Junior Women 15-16). Oliver Litinsky, 15, was second in Category 3/4 Open.

MFG #1 Beach Party — Silver Lake, WA (Sep 13, 381 racers) runs junior racing on school grades rather than age bands — 1st-2nd Grade, 3rd-5th Grade, Middle School, High School. Winners: Tim Nachtigal (HS Male), Molly McAllister (HS Female), Cormac Jaten-Thompson (MS Male), Oakley McMahan (MS Female), Tristan Jaten-Thompson and Addy Stenovec (3rd-5th), Asa Plourde and Hazel Butchart (1st-2nd). Paige Holden, 15 (NWCX Project), was fourth in Cat 1/2 Female.

Midwest: devo teams everywhere

The North Central region is the most devo-saturated in the country — Midwest Devo, Lionhearts Junior Racing, Broken Spoke Devo, Capital Bicycle Racing Club — and juniors aren’t just winning open fields, they’re filling them.

Lionhearts CX (Sep 6, 153 racers) is the extreme case: juniors won every single wave on the card.

Devo Cross (Aug 22, 145 racers) — the season’s earliest race in this sweep. Junior 13-14 M: Grayson Scott, 13. Junior 13-14 F: June Fisher, 14. Junior 0-12 M: West Moore, 12. Junior 0-12 F: Alex Alvarado, 12 — all Midwest Devo. In the open waves, Axel Farnham, 16 (Donovan Racing) won Wave 1a, Aaron Boehman, 16, won Wave 5, and Ellie Minner, 15, won the open women’s wave.

Carter Park CX — Kings Mills, OH (Sep 13, 203 racers) — Henry Cummings, 16 (Midwest Devo), won Wave 1, a 38-rider field combining Boys 15-18, Men’s 3 and Masters 3. Ellie Minner, 15, won Women’s 1/2/3. Aaron Boehman, 16, won Wave 5, 44 riders. Junior fields: Grayson Scott, 13, and Zoe Minner, 12 (Lionhearts).

Wisconsin — and a name you’ll recognise. At Silver Creek CX in Manitowoc (Sep 12), Rylan Zacharek, 18, was second and Finnley Sonnemann, 17, third in Men Cat 1/2/3 Elite — the two CXD Trek riders who would stand on the Rochester UCI junior podium a week later. Sonnemann was second in the same field at Greene Acres CX in St Francis the next day.

Also in Wisconsin: Brooklyn Becker, 15 (Gelbbrucke), won Women Cat 3/4 Elite at both Silver Creek and Greene Acres. Jonathan Wood, 17, won Men Cat 4 Elite at Silver Creek, where Asher McGinnis, 14 (Broken Spoke Devo), was second. At Alpine Valley Nocturnal Cross in East Troy (Aug 22), Anna Pearlman, 17, won Women Cat 1/2 Elite and Teddy Hoks, 18, won Men Cat 3/4 Elite; Henry Bobyk, 16 — later ninth in Rochester’s Cat 3 — was third in Men Cat 1/2/3 Elite.

Mountain West

Thinner, and thinly documented, but with a standout family. At P-Town #4 in Provo, Utah (Sep 15), the Abbott sisters of Rouleur swept the women’s open races — Crista Abbott, 17, won Women A from Melissa Abbott, 17, and Kaitlyn Abbott, 16, won Women B. Junior fields went to Sammy Ellis (Jr Men) and Codi Hoopes, 15 (Jr Women, Team Hoopes).

New England

Massachusetts has been racing since August, with junior fields that rival the Mid-Atlantic’s.

NCC Hydra Cross — Holyoke, MA (Sep 5, 256 racers) fielded 29 riders in Junior Boys 9-12 alone.

Open fields at Hydra: Kendal Craven, 15 (Vulcan Cycling), won Women Cat 4/5 with Willow Wozniak, 14, second. Penelope Moses, 18, won Women Cat 3/4 with Carla Huber, 16, second. Hannah Dinolfo, 15, was second and Naomi Ericson, 16, third in Women Cat 1/2/3 — three weeks before they’d finish 1-3 and 1-1 in Rochester’s Cat 2 and Cat 3 fields.

Blunt Park CX — Springfield, MA (Aug 30, 237 racers): Junior Boys 9-12 went to David Boryczewski, 11, from Eli Skulte, 11 — the Connecticut pair, out-of-state. Miles Abrams, 14, won 13-14; Breandan Cole, 18, won 15-18; Greta Purwin, 11, and Trista Purwin, 15, won the girls’ fields. In the open races, Alta Breismeister, 14, won Women Cat 4/5, Penelope Moses, 18, won Women Cat 3/4, and Hannah Dinolfo, 15, was second in Women Elite 1/2/3.

The riders crossing regions

The season’s most interesting thread is how much these scenes overlap already:

A note on the data

Age coverage is wildly uneven by region, and that shapes what can be said. In the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, most finishers have a verifiable racing age. Elsewhere it thins out: MFG in Washington had ages for 131 of 381 finishers.

Where a region’s junior numbers look thin here, the honest reading is often that the data is thin, not the racing.

Category naming also varies more than you’d expect. The Mid-Atlantic uses age bands, the Pacific Northwest uses school grades, the Midwest uses lettered waves that mix juniors and adults. There is no single national junior category structure, which is a real obstacle to comparing regions — and a reason a junior can be invisible in one region’s results format and obvious in another’s.

Results verified against crossresults.com race exports and official timing where available. Ages are cyclocross racing ages for 2026–27 — age as of December 31, 2027.

Savino is 18. He is not an outlier.

By the time the UCI circus reached Rochester on September 19, the regional season was already a month old — four weekends across Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania, plus a Wednesday-night series in Rocky Hill that started in August. And across all of it, the same thing kept happening: juniors entered open fields and won them.

All ages are cyclocross racing ages for 2026–27. A range means the exact year isn’t on record but the rider is bounded within it.

Eleven open-field wins

Before you count a single junior field:

Two of those are the top race of the day. A fourteen-year-old won a women’s Cat 4/5 field at GOAT. This is the shape of the season, not a Rochester quirk.

Rochester Cyclocross

Rochester, NY · September 19–20 · UCI C1/C2, USCX Round 1

The season’s first UCI weekend and the deepest junior fields of the year so far.

Junior Men 17-18 UCI

Saturday came down to a bike throw between two riders credited with identical times. Sunday, Scholnick made sure it never got that close. Both are in their final junior season and they open the year dead level.

Junior Women 17-18 UCI

Hauber won both days by ten seconds, then eleven. Sunday’s top five were covered by twenty-two seconds.

The thirteen-year-old

Jack O’Donnell (Competitive Edge Racing) is 13, and he won Junior Men 15-16 both days — six seconds up on Levi Bensimon, 16, on Saturday; twenty-two seconds up on the same rider Sunday. Two independent sources confirm his age. He is racing two full bands up and winning.

The rest of the junior podiums

Juniors in Rochester’s open fields

Twenty-eight riders started Saturday’s Senior Men Cat 3. The first seventeen across the line were juniors. The first adult, Jacob Ferrante, 28, came home 18th.

The Cat 2 women’s field was 100% junior on both days. In Cat 3 women, the only adult across two days was Rebecca Marshall, 30, ninth on Saturday. Further down Sunday’s Cat 4/5 men, David Boryczewski, 11, finished 24th — the youngest rider to complete any open field all weekend.

Elite: no juniors identified in either elite field, either day — 95 of 96 finishes verified at 19 or older.

Carpenter Cross

Horsham, PA · September 19 · PACX Round 2 · 209 racers

NJCX Project brought the numbers — 14 of 30 junior starters — but converted two of four fields. Vulcan won the other two off five riders.

Jade Boudreault is 12 and won the U19 women’s race — a full band and more above her own. Three seconds covered the top two in Men U19.

Open fields: Tamara Warner, 16 (Vulcan) — third in Women Cat 1/2/3. Gavin Buchanan, 15 (NJCX Project) — third in Men Cat 4/Novice.

Belltown Throwdown 1 & 2

Portland, CT · September 12–13 · PMCX Rounds 1 & 2 · 251 and 117 racers

The weekend that set the tone.

Open fields

Junior fields

Swandrome ‘Cross

Freeville, NY · September 13 · 84 racers

Brad Grimm, 16, won the Open Men’s race outright — 58:20 over thirty riders — with Eli Timmerman, 16, third and Charlie Principe, 15, fourth. All three would be on or near the Cat 3 podium at Rochester six days later. Three Grimm brothers were in that field. Maeve Bernhard, 18, was second in Open Women.

GOAT CXing

Scotia, NY · September 13 · 84 racers

A Capital Bicycle Racing Club junior devo showcase — and a clean sweep of every open-field win on the card.

Pineapple Crush Cross

Emmaus, PA · September 6 · PACX Round 1 · 260 racers

Pennsylvania’s opener. Marcela Falquier, 16 (NJCX Project), won the Cat 1/2/3 women’s race — the top women’s field of the day. Kendal Craven, 15, won Cat 4/5 Women. Bodi Yocum, 17, was third in Cat 3/4 men.

Hidden Valley CX

New Haven, CT · September 20 · PMCX Round 3 · 170 racers

A structural note worth carrying all season: Hidden Valley offers no junior field above age 12. Categories run 6-8 and 9-12, then 15-18 juniors are folded into combined open fields. A sixteen-year-old in Connecticut has nowhere else to go.

Orson Felter, 15; Spencer Mendes, 15; Charles Nablo, 14; and Vera Milone, 15, all rode open fields without reaching a podium. Results were still provisional at the time of writing.

CCAP Rocky Hill

Rocky Hill, CT · Wednesdays, August 26 – September 16

Where the Connecticut season actually began. Four weeknight races, small fields, and a junior race that is a genuine pipeline — Eli Skulte and Pietro Belli traded wins here before both landed on Belltown and Hidden Valley podiums.

And in the open men’s race at Round 1 on August 26 — the first core-region result of the season — Stephen Savino IV, 18, won.

Riders to watch

This weekend

Virginia’s Blue Ridge Go Cross, Roanoke, September 26–27 — USCX round 2, and the Zacharek–Scholnick rematch. Closer to home: Pennypack on the Delaware (PACX, Philadelphia) and PMCX #4, Damned at the Dam at Mansfield Hollow, both Saturday.

Results verified against official timing (my.raceresult.com) and crossresults.com. Ages are cyclocross racing ages for the 2026–27 season — age as of December 31, 2027.