FITTED JUST RIGHT: Hubs and Hops volunteers fit Tyson West for his new bike and helmet during Wednesday’s bike rodeo.

THOMASVILLE — Wednesday afternoon, the Marguerite Neel Williams Boys & Girls Club held a bicycle rodeo and giveaway for local youths to prepare them with bike safety for the upcoming summer season.

Boys & Girls Club CEO Lee Wagner said that they were honored to partner with Roger Hawkes, the owner of Hubs and Hops, and the volunteers from his business for the special giveaway.

“We are certainly honored to partner with Roger Hawkes and Hubs and Hops, a bicycle shop and restaurant across the street,” Wagner said.

According to Wagner, the rodeo was an idea of Hawkes, who was vital to the procuring of the bikes that they planned to give away to the children taking part in the rodeo.

“Roger is one of our board members, he had a wonderful idea of a bicycle rodeo and a bicycle giveaway we’re having today,” Wagner said. “He was instrumental in procuring a number of bicycles that you see here and all the wonderful volunteers that came out to make this day special.”

Wagner said that the rodeo consisted of them weaving in and out around small orange cones and coming to proper and complete stops on the bikes, something that he said many kids underestimate the difficulty of doing properly.

“So, what we wanted to do is expose our kids to bicycle safety,” he said. “A lot of kids think they know how to ride a bike when, in fact, we witnessed this morning, some smaller kids out here that didn’t even know how to stop the bike.”

Wagner continued on to say that bicycle safety was very important as summer began, with kids needing to know how to keep themselves and others safe as they take advantage of their new bikes.

“Bicycle safety is certainly something that we take for granted sometimes,” he said. “And so, now that summer is almost upon us, we wanted to make sure the kids not only had access to a bike, which we will be giving away, but once they get a bike, they know how to safely operate the bike.”

During the event, the children were broken into three groups of varying ages, with helmets properly fitted for them by onsite volunteers, before they were sent to the small obstacle course prepared.

With over 40 bikes collected for the event, and some of them built from donated parts by volunteers from Hubs and Hops, Wagner said that they owed a lot to Hawkes and his volunteers.

“We want to thank Roger and his group for securing the bikes and making this possible,” he said.

Continuing on, Wagner said that this was a great kick off event for an exciting summer at the Marguerite Neel Williams Boys & Girls Club that they’ll be starting up soon.

“This is just one of the many great things we do here at the Boys & Girls Club, we make sure that the kids are safe and having fun,” Wagner said. “This is just a kick-off for a very exciting summer that we’ll be getting started in the next six weeks or so.”