Things I'm Looking Forward To
At Southern Oregon Speedway
Once I arrive in Oregon, it's going to be time to focus on my new gig. It's going to be a completely new experience for me, and I'm going to be meeting new people. I really don't know anybody out there. I don't know much of the history, and I have to learn a lot. I leave behind familiar and comfortable surroundings and many people that I consider my friends.
I think the first thing I want to do when I get up there is walk on that race track. I want to get a lay of the land, walk the grandstands, just walk all the way around the facilities. This is going to be my home track for at least 10 years if all goes well. It is my goal to help Mike McCann make this place successful.
When I say this, I think it's important for me to acknowledge John Skinner. John kept this thing going for 20 years. Without him, none of this may have been possible. For all that he's done to keep the sport going in the Medford area, he has nothing but my respect.
Mike tells me that I'll be announcing the Quarter Midget track. I'll be honest with you, I've never really even watched a race on a track like this. I had the opportunity to go to Delta Speedway in Stockton a few times, but they were running Mini Stocks and Dwarf Cars and Mini Sprints there at the time. I'm not even sure how well I'll do my job there, but I'll give it my best.
We are charged with trying to reestablish the program there, and it's important to get a program going on the small track. There are a lot of kids that run cars on tracks like this across the country. They are the racers of the future on the bigger tracks. Basically, we are building new stars of racing, some of which who will end up going to the bigger track next door.
I never really worked with kids. Now, Gary Jacob used to go to tracks like this whenever he could, and the families really respected him. Gary saw what tracks like this meant to the racing community. I will continue to employ my strategy of every driver being important on that race track. I will try to do my best to encourage these youngsters to do their best, but also to stay focused on the things that matter in life, such as staying in school and getting that education. I am the cautionary example when it comes to that.
I do enjoy announcing, and one day I want to be on the microphone on the bigger track. Mike has his reasons for going the way he is, and I wish Bryce luck in announcing. If I can do anything to help him do his job better, I will. We have to work together as a team to help make Southern Oregon Speedway fly. There is a lot of work to do to make this thing as big as I believe it can be.
I know Mike has a lot of faith in the staff that he is putting together, and he believes just as I do that this track has some great years ahead of it. Mike has a history of doing good things for the sport of auto racing, especially in the state of Oregon. I believe that this is going to be his best effort yet. I'm sure Mike is going to throw a bunch of little things at me, and I need to be ready to do the best I can with all of them.
We are establishing some stuff up at Southern and Speedway. On the top of that list is the Sprint Car division. This is a big challenge, and Mike believes as I do that we can have a good program out there. My concern is that there have been people trying to undermine what we are doing. Basically, there are certain people who believe they are bigger than the sport in this division.
Obviously, you need stars that the fans can come out there and identify with. But, if there are certain stars that don't want to participate for whatever reason, then we will make new stars of the racers that we do have. I have watched drivers who weren't really that fast when they started, but with seat time and a lot of laps, they got much better. I have no doubt that we are going to have some great stars in the Sprint Car division in short time.
Southern Oregon Speedway could be the home of Late Model racing. Mike has been in negotiations with some of the drivers, and if I have any say about it, we're going to make this thing fly. I absolutely love Late Model racing. I know this isn't a slam dunk, but I know we can do it here. We're going to do it.
I've always felt that with divisions like Late Models and Sprint Cars you have to give a little more TLC to them. This means a little bit of extra hype going to the division to let everybody know what's going on. The more the fans know about the racers who are there, the more they're going to be coming out to watch the races. The more the racers know about what's going on there, the more likely they are to bring their cars out there. If we make it special, everybody's going to want to be a part of it.
Probably on the top three of my all time favorite divisions is Street Stock racing. The Street Stocks seem to be kind of dying out at Southern Oregon Speedway in the last few years, but there are remnants of this division looking for a place to race. I feel like this type of racing is important, because this track barely has the Street Stock division and doesn't have a Hobby Stock class. I think we need to build something here, so I'm going to assess the situation and do what I can to help.
The redheaded stepchild of racing seems to be Mini Stock racing. Some people don't understand it, and some people don't think that these cars are really race cars. In my time watching this division through the years, going back to Baylands and Petaluma, I have seen many great racers come through the Mini Stock ranks and go on the other divisions. Mini Stock racing is very important to the continuation of this race track.
There are already some big names in the Mini Stock division up there, not the least of which are defending champion David Marble and previous champion Gary Anderson. They brought one of the more solid car counts out there as last season came to a close, and I believe we can get this class bigger. As with the two Modified classes, this is a class that shares drivers with neighboring Yreka in Northern California. This is one of the reasons I will probably be ghost writing stories for Yreka, because it will be relevant to the people as drivers come from Southern Oregon to race there and vice versa.
In recent years, the track has been trying to get a new Hornet division started. This division is similar to the Four Banger class that ran in Antioch for several years. It is the entry level division for the average fan to get into the sport at a reasonable cost. Though this division raced last year, I don't have a lot of information on who raced. It seems this division wasn't important enough for people to write about, but that is going to change when I get there. These drivers matter. This division matters.
The Super 4 Mini Stock division bolted from Medford to go race the pavement at Roseburg, but there are several drivers looking to come back this year. These are the souped up Mini Stock cars, and it reminds me of the souped up class at Baylands and more recently the class that was out at Chowchilla Speedway. I've heard 6-10 cars will be showing up there, and it will be interesting to see what this division can do.
Of course, Medford has the IMCA Modifieds and Sport Modified divisions. I believe both of these divisions can do better than what the car count has been in recent years. We also have one of the crown jewels in Modified racing, the prestigious Lon Skinner Memorial Race, which attracts some of the top drivers from the West Coast of the United States. For instance, Bobby Hogge IV won that race and the $5,000 prize last season.
I'm familiar with some of the names in this division, including Mark Wauge, John DeBenediti, Nick Trenchard and Albert Gill, the two-time defending champion. We have some good racers in that Modified division, but we need to get some more cars out there. They're out there, and I want to help make them know that they are important and they are wanted at this race track.
Two of the stars of the Sport Mod division came out and raced at Southern Oregon Speedway. There is defending Oregon State IMCA champion Mike Medal and defending track champion Jorddon Braaten. Jorddon was an absolute beast last year and won many races both at Southern Oregon Speedway and Siskiyou Motor Speedway in Yreka. I guess he is our equivalent to Fred Ryland. But there are other drivers in this division, and I look forward to meeting them all and helping keep the show hyped.
Another thing that has caught my eye is the Northwest Modified Cup and the new Northwest Sport Mod Challenge. A man by the name of Steve Kerstulovich is promoting these deals, and he's doing a lot to get money and contingency prizes in both of these point races. He awarded the top 5 drivers last year in the Modified Cup with money and contingency prizes and nice trophies.
Steve added the Sport Mods this year, and he already has $1,000 in prize money for these guys. What he doesn't have is any good hype and his web page needs work. So, with the experience that I have with the old DCRR State point race, I'm going to see if there's anything I can do to help him make this thing bigger and better. I like what he's trying to do with this stuff, and he's done some good things so far.
We also play host to touring groups, the Outlaw Pro Stocks and the Southern Oregon Dwarf Car Association. The Pro Stocks are sort of like the Limited Late Models out in Antioch, and we get anywhere from 12 to 20 cars showing up on any given night. Pro Stocks are a popular form of racing, and they are vital to the continuation of this race track.
Dwarf Cars are maybe the brother of the redheaded stepchild. They don't get a lot of respect, and yet week in and week out they provide some of the best races at the tracks on which they compete. There are some talented racers in this division, which generally gets from 16 to 20 cars for any given race.
Southern Oregon Speedway is fortunate because we get a Dwarf Car National event. The West Coast Dwarf Car Association deal, originally put together by Frank Munroe and the leaders of various groups, brings some of the best drivers throughout the West Coast of the United States to Medford one weekend every year. This is a fun event with lots of great racing and some good times after the races are over. As with the Skinner race, this is an event at which I will be looking forward to seeing my old friends from California who will be visiting.
Because this is Mike McCann promoting the race track, you've got to know that there's going to be Hardtops there. Mike has spoken with some of the drivers from the Old Time Racing Association that races on the pavement of Roseburg. About a half dozen or so guys want to do the some dirt track racing, and I'm looking forward to seeing this happen.
One of the things that we want to try to establish here is some stability to this place. For various reasons, races got cancelled and things happened in the last few years that kind of hurt the show overall. Some driver confidence was lost in this race track, and it's our goal to reestablish that. The message will be that we intend to race as scheduled and every race car out there matters.
I've heard a few things could be thrown at me, including doing the souvenir programs, the webpage, calculating points, putting out the press releases, announcing at the smaller track, possibly announcing a couple of shows on the bigger track and whatever else Mike thinks that I can handle. It is my intention to go up there with renewed focus and get the job done.
We have goals in mind, and I believe that we can get it done, but belief and talk won't get the job done. We have to get in there on the ground floor and get to work. So, when I arrive in Oregon and set up my workstation, I will begin working on my articles and whatever else I need to do with the computer.
I'm definitely being taken out of my comfort zone, as this has been my home area here in Northern California. I have lived here my whole life and have never had a desire to move. I know everybody here, and I can walk in to the race track that I've gone to for years and people know who I am. So the challenge for me in going to Southern Oregon Speedway is to reestablish myself and let them know that I'm a person who cares about the sport, and I want to get in there and make a difference.
I've asked myself a few times why it is that Mike McCann actually wants me to be up there when there are other people qualified to do this thing. Just as I've had respect for all the good things that Mike has done through the years, Mike has been reading my writing through the years and has respect for what I've done. It is his belief that I can do it. So, I need to get in there and show him that his faith in me is justified.
So at this point in time, I sort of feel like I need to figure out where my head is and renew my focus, but I don't really have the time for me and my personal issues. However, I know that when I get in the moment and get focused, my instincts take over and I will do what I've done for all these years. I won't have time to play around. I need to get in there and be focused on what I've got to do, and that's going take a total investment of myself. I think I'm up to the challenge. I look forward to getting up to Southern Oregon Speedway and getting started.
