Meet our Coaches

SimplyMTB Coaches are engaged in the art of teaching and connecting through the practice of helping our students discover the rhythm of mountain biking.

Jamie Bangerter

Founder and Head Coach of SimplyMTB

Level Two PMBI Certified Mountain Bike Instructor. 6 years of mountain bike skills coaching experience with over 1000 students taught. Jamie connects with students through bringing awareness to life experience parallels of the student to each lesson allowing the student to pull from skills they already have and apply them to the trail. She believes that we can all improve and continues to strive and grow on the bike and in our own lives. She focuses on teaching her students to feel a difference and pay attention to when something changes in their own riding, this is what we refer to as Mindful Mountain Biking.

Sam Buckmiller

Our Chief of Stoke!

Sam enjoys being an excellent mentor and coaching people of all ages. He has many other interests outside of riding which contribute to this enthusiasm. Sam also works as a music teacher, specifically teaching drums. His goal is to inspire achievement through the art of drumming and his definition of success is to do your best to be your best. He has raced at high levels in various two-wheeled disciplines such as BMX and Motocross. Sam maintains a busy teaching schedule both on bikes and in the drum studio. Sam served an LDS mission in Florida and focused his college and current studies on positive psychology and communications. He feels this greatly enhances his teaching and hopes to be able to effectively teach and inspire not only on a bike but also in life.

Dan Hall

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I have been a ski instructor for 18 years and have always enjoyed sharing a love for the outdoors. When I started working as a ski instructor I had to find something to balance my seasons. That led me into the world of mountain biking and found it just as enjoyable. For the next several years my life was full of teaching skiing in the winters and working as a bike mechanic. Biking and skiing have taken me to a number of wonderful places over the years and I love sharing and teaching people ways to have fun experiences in the outdoors.

Marty Klingler

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Marty loves it all! She is a fun-loving and hard-working athlete, wife, mother of three awesome kids, and a coach. She hasn’t met someone she doesn’t like and hasn’t walked away without learning something from them. She thrives on helping others catch the vision of their own potential and builds on the goodness they bring to whatever sport they’re involved in. She connects quickly with others and helps create confidence through fun activities and positive feedback. She’s been coaching various sports including mountain biking to friends and their kids for over 10 years. For the last two years, she has coached on the NICA American Fork High School MTB team and has loved it. She’s naturally a competitor but tries to balance the push and pull for her clients in whatever their ability level is. She finds it so fulfilling to help beginners learn the joy of mountain biking by building a strong foundation through carefully built fundamentals but she also finds it equally rewarding bringing awareness to the small nuances of an intermediate or advanced rider to “stop, spot, and swap” and help them launch off that plateau. Coaching is her passion because it connects all of her favorite things together! People, sports, improving, and playing! As her 11-year-old son said, “she has good tips and can make anything into a song or game. She has coached lots of sports and has seen some crazy things so it’s a good thing she has her wilderness first responder training and comes with plenty of fun.” Marty’s enthusiasm is contagious and she wants to help you ride to your full potential! Come bike with her!

Bob Violano

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Get ready to be amazed by my adventurous spirit and impressive teaching skills! With years of experience under my belt, I am a master of both the mountains and the classroom. As a former downhill mountain bike champion and expert snowboard instructor, I know how to conquer any slope and turn any learner into a pro. My passion for biking has taken me on thrilling journeys, from exploring Sardinia on my bike to embarking on epic bike packing adventures. When I’m not shredding the trails, I’m shaping young minds as a public school teacher with a decade of experience. Join me on my two-wheeled adventures and let’s ride to new heights.

Lia Westermann

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Lia is a 7-time mountain bike national champion and enjoys all forms of bike racing, but mainly races enduro. She currently races in the Enduro World Cup and the Big Mountain Enduro series, and she loves seeing how coaching can quickly improve someone’s technical skills on the bike. Lia loves connecting with others through biking and creating confidence on the bike with fun and safe practice. She also loves reinforcing positive feedback and watching people get faster on the bike whether it’s on rock gardens, drops, gap jumps, or steep corners.

Lia grew up in Salt Lake City riding mountain bikes with her family and quickly fell in love with the outdoors and exploring on her bike at a young age. She started out racing cross country but switched to gravity racing in 2016 and started racing downhill, enduro, and dual slalom professionally in 2018. She loves inspiring others to ride their bikes and to gain confidence on the bike.

Mountain bike racing helps her push herself, conquer her fears, and most importantly have fun! She loves seeing what she can accomplish on the bike as a professional athlete and how she can progress over time, and wants to inspire others to do the same. She is also an engineer and loves the physics and technical aspects behind mountain biking.

When she is not mountain biking, Lia is usually enjoying the outdoors in some other way whether it’s alpine skiing, cross country skiing, road biking, camping, or hiking!

Seth Morris

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Whether on a bike or a snowboard, Seth is addicted to progression and the sensation of railing a turn and flowing down a mountain. With almost 20 years of experience coaching and teaching, one of his favorite things is helping people enjoy the process and embrace a beginner mindset. Seth has developed a keen eye for the fundamentals and loves giving riders the confidence to push their own limits. When he’s not coaching you’ll probably catch him pedaling around Corner Canyon with a toddler on the Mac Ride or trying to get into a silly bonus line on his snowboard.

Sean Murphy

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I first started mountain biking after moving to Utah from Ohio at 12 years old. At first, I thought I could do it all by myself and learn using YouTube videos. My dad then forced me to take SimplyMTB lessons with Jamie and it was the best time I’ve ever had on a bike. After a few lessons with Jamie I asked her if I could help out with some clinics. Ever since then I have been the photographer and intern for SimplyMTB. I got my PMBIA level 1 certification once I was old enough so that I could start coaching. When I’m not mountain biking I do many other sports. In the spring I play second base for my baseball team and run the 100m and do long jump for track and field. In the winter I ski and work in a ski shop. Mountain biking has taught me so much in life in general and has helped my mental approach to the other sports I enjoy.