A tale of ‘Jesus and dirt bikes’ in southern Utah

Sophia “Sophie” Phelps was destined for a professional career in motocross as the eldest child in a dirt bike family, despite being a girl.
The 21-year-old’s love of riding was fostered by both her parents. In the Phelps home, the kids learned how to ride a pedal bike without training wheels by age 3 and a dirt bike by age 4.
Her father, Bill Phelps, wanted a riding buddy and didn’t hesitate to share what he loved with his daughter. She thinks her dad was secretly prepping her to race motocross all along, by, for example, turning things into a race, doing balance exercises together and practicing foot down.
Her mother, Shaunna Phelps, would pick her up from elementary school with their dirt bikes in the back of the truck, ready for an afterschool desert ride.
At just 5 years old, Phelps competed in her first race on a small loop in the southern Utah desert and finished third.
Due to Phelps’ and her competitors’ young ages, there were no separate classes (or races) for boys and girls. At the post-race awards banquet, the emcee read off the names of the top three finishers of Phelps’ race but was shocked when he read her name.
“‘In third place, Sophie Phelps’ and he goes, ‘Wait, is this a girl?’” Phelps told the Deseret News. “So I just strutted on up there, and I remember hearing him say that and I thought, ‘He wasn’t expecting that.’ I got back to my parents, and they said, ‘Did you hear him say that? They were so surprised that a girl got third place in this class.’”
The honors haven’t stopped for Phelps since that first race. She has gone on to win two amateur national championships. And she said she wouldn’t have the success she has enjoyed without her faith.
If there are two topics Phelps can’t shut up about — her words, not mine — it’s Jesus and dirt bikes. She considers them her chicken and waffles, an unlikely pairing that somehow just go together.
“I think most things I do in some way either revolve around my faith or are highly impacted because of it,” she said.
As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Phelps believes in her divine nature and identity as a child of God. Her spiritual DNA is as important to her as her actual DNA, if not more.
She said it gives her a greater understanding and perspective of who she is and how she should treat and speak to herself, she said. To help reinforce that belief, she recites the church’s theme for its young women’s organization before every race at the start line while waiting for the gate to drop.
“Specifically (in) big races, it helps me calm down ‘cause there’s a lot of good truths in there,” she said. “I repeat that to myself on the line when I’m feeling nervous.”
The first line of the theme reads, “I am a beloved daughter of heavenly parents, with a divine nature and eternal destiny.”
Those truths were pivotal in one of the biggest races of Phelps’ life.
In August 2022, Phelps was looking to defend her national title from the previous year at the Loretta Lynn’s Amateur National Motocross Championship. At the time, Loretta’s was the highest championship a woman could win in motocross.
But those hopes were put in jeopardy after a poor start to the race. While trying to make some passes, Phelps accidentally collided with another rider and crashed within the first 30 seconds of the race.
She looked at her bike in disbelief and thought, “There’s no way I can win.” The negative intrusive thoughts continued until she remembered her divine identity and the theme she had recited to herself just seconds before.
“You are a daughter of God. You have an eternal destiny. A daughter of God should not talk like this,” she said to herself.
Now in last place, Phelps picked her bike back up, started it and finished the race. In the span of 20 minutes, she went from 39th place to first and secured her second national title.
That experience was a testament to Phelps that with God she could do hard things.
Phelps’ faith affects not only how she views herself but also influences her unique view of her competitors.
“Having the understanding that you yourself are a child of God is enormously important and will change your whole life. But equally as important is having the understanding that every person around you is a child of God, and I think that’s something that has really improved my racing the more that I keep that in consideration,” she said.
It allows her to truly be happy for the success of her competitors even at her own expense and it frees her from the pressure of hunting accolades.
“It doesn’t feel so high pressure when you know that it’s kind of like the least important thing that you’ll ever do,” she said.
Before she won her first national title at Loretta Lynn’s, she had written down on a piece of paper, “A championship title is the least important title you will ever have.”
Underneath that message, she wrote down titles that she currently had and hoped to have in the future that she deemed more important: daughter of God, sister, daughter, mother and wife.
“My entire life I wanted to be known as the women’s motocross champion. I always wanted to be this champion and winner,” she said. “It took me obtaining the very thing that I wanted to realize that that didn’t define me and that I was so much more as a person than a dirt bike rider.”
Last year, Phelps was ready to move on from motocross. Although she loved racing, she had tired of the amateur races, which were her only options with the U.S. not having its own professional women’s series.
She was 20 years old and trying to finish her mechanical engineering degree at Utah Tech, which had often taken a backseat to her racing career.
Then in January, the 2024 Women’s Pro Motocross Championship was announced. A full-scale women’s series hadn’t been held in the U.S. since 2012, and nothing had replaced it since a smaller-scale series in 2018.
None of the races took place in the West, and the individual races’ prize money wouldn’t even be enough to cover travel costs. Phelps told her parents that if they were done competing, she was, too.
But something her mom said changed her mind.
“If some of the top women don’t show up to this, it might never happen again,” she recalled her mom saying.
In order to give the next generation of female riders a greater chance of having a bigger platform, the Phelps family decided to compete in the eight-race series and likely Phelps’ last serious year of competing.
She had hoped to go out on a high note, but Phelps hasn’t been riding up to her standards and currently sits in fourth place.
“It is tough knowing what you once were able to do and right now you’re not replicating that,” she said.
With only two races left, it’s bittersweet for Phelps.
“I think as unfortunate as it is to not do as well as I had hoped, it helps me kind of prepare to move on and try other things,” she said.
But Phelps doesn’t plan on leaving the world of motocross and dirt bikes behind for good. She currently works for one of her sponsors of nearly 10 years, Fasst Company, where she designs bike parts through 3D modeling.
Phelps also hopes to continue to grow the sport for women and has been mulling over ideas to increase the media coverage for women riders who are shortchanged compared to the throngs of YouTube channels, podcasts and race broadcasts for the men.
“Can the women have a slice of that? That’s kind of where my headspace is at,” she said.
She’s even considering taking matters into her own hands and launching a channel to livestream races, share women’s highlights and interview women racers.
“Maybe it will go nowhere. Maybe women’s motocross will dissolve. But I don’t think it will. I have hope.”