Durango Devo Ready for New Leadership

Durango Devo is changing leadership after Levi Kurlander announces his resignation from the executive director role. He's staying on to hire a new leader, but the move signals a new era for the program. You're watching the Local News Network brought to you by Serious Texas Bar-B-Q and San Juan Regional Medical Center, I'm Connor Shreve. After eight years at the helm of one of the country's most renowned cycling development programs, Kurlander feels it's time to let someone else lead, something he admits is hard after growing up as one of its students.

You know, pick a life lesson and I could figure out a way to tie it back to how I've grown up in Devo or working for Devo. Can back up a trailer, that's always, that's the running joke, is like, yeah, I can back a trailer into anywhere you want now I've worked for Devo for long enough. So yeah, pick a life lesson and there's something to, there's a way to tie it back to the sport, at least for me, and I know that's true for a whole lot of other kids as well.

Devo alumni enjoyed a breakout season over the past year, winning the Vuelta Espana and making up half the US Olympic cross-country mountain bike team. But Kurlander says Durango Devo fights against the notion its mission is to produce professional riders.

That can tend to dominate people's impression of what we do and what our goals are. What we are in reality is far different, and the other, you know, 6000 to 8000 alumni that we could speak about don't have any race results that we would mention, right? But the vast majority of them are awesome successful people.

Kurlander has led the group's largest growth phase, but says his personal experience being one of Devo's first pupils means more than that.

Yeah, rode with them in some of the first years of Devo, in like 2008 and 2009. And yeah, I was one of those kids that didn't end up on the world tour, but I had just as much fun. And it's played just as big an impact on my life as a whole, I think, as it has for anybody else.

He is hoping to hire a new executive director, a final task he's not taking lightly. He hopes Devo stays true to its mission, and new leaders embrace sport's ability to develop people.

It's about the community that you build and the skills that you're able to apply outside of the sport, of the activity. And some of the same stuff that makes those elite-level athletes successful is what makes other graduates of our programs successful in their day-to-day, their lives.

Kurlander says he's not exactly sure what's next, but he's going to be away from a computer screen for a while. You can find info on Durango Devo programs online. Want to know more about Kurlander's tenure as Devo's leader? Listen to the full interview at Beyond the Headlines wherever you find your podcasts. For more information about this and other stories, visit durangolocal.news. Thanks for watching this edition of the Local News Network. I'm Connor Shreve.