DIPOLOG, Zanorte–Girls are proving that motocross isn’t just a boy’s sport. At the 9th leg of the MS Motosuit and Motocross Series held over the weekend in Dipolog, Zamboanga del Norte, six female participants were all  revved up for the underbone ladies 3 heats  division.

Never mind if the rain that poured after lunch left the tracks slippery for the motocross riders who were to compete in the afternoon.

“The muddy tracks and hills made the race even more challenging,” says 17-year-old Joly Mae Calaga, who has participated in three motocross competitions for the Hudyaka Festival, the annual celebration of the Zanorte province held in May.

In this year’s series, dubbed the 6th Castrol Invitational Motocross Competition, Joly Mae is competing with her sister, also a motocross enthusiast like her. A rider for four years now, this sophomore nursing student is a member of the city’s longstanding riding group, the Dipolog Cycles Unlimited, which organized the first motocross event in the 1980s.

It was Joly’s father Walter, current president of Cycles Unlimited, who influenced his  daughters to go into riding. After graduating from the BMX, Joly took on easily to racing bikes. In fact, her five-foot-one-inch frame may seem small for what look like heavy motorbikes, but she maneuvers her RMX 125 and KDX 200 racing bikes really well.

Joly takes her competitions seriously. Weeks before the Castrol invitational, she geared up by practicing at the Dipolog grandstand. A week ago, she also participated in another motocross contest in Sibutad, a municipality in Zanorte.

Motocross is a local obsession in Dipolog, which hosts Mindanao’s highly anticipated competition every year and attracts riders from all over Visayas and Mindanao. This year’s invitational series gathered more than 150 riders from Ozamiz, Cebu, Dumaguete, Pagadian, and Bukidnon, including top rider Irwin Uypitching from Dumaguete.