by: Jared Bolton
Friday, December 13, 2019 | 3:00 PM
Welcome to Quick Fill.
This week’s edition comes a little delayed as we decided to wait until we released the 2020 GNCC schedule before posting. Honestly, I didn’t want to give you another teaser of the schedule coming very soon, and with the lack of off-season topics I figured this would also give us the chance to talk about the schedule as a whole, in addition to what you’ve read in the Press Release. More on that later, first, let’s talk about last weekend’s banquets!
As usual, the banquets were an absolute blast. There’s been times in the past where it seemed to take a long time to get through all the awards but this year’s edition went fairly quickly and everyone I spoke with was having a great time. As usual, we also gave away a number of specialty awards and if you missed those, here’s a quick recap of who won what... On Friday night, ATV Rider of the Year honors went to Traci Pickens for her record shattering 12th WXC championship while Landon Wolfe claimed the 4x4 Rider of the Year, Kevin Yoho took Amateur Rider of the Year and Parker Henderson ended up as ATV Youth Rider of the Year. 82-Year-Old Jake Stratton took home the Bad Ass Award because, well, he’s 82 years old! The ATV State Championship went to Pennsylvania and Yamaha claimed the ATV Manufacturers Cup. Specialized came away as the 2019 Sponsor of the Year and as usual, we honored those who we lost in 2019 which included the following; Schoolboy Junior racer Ayden Konkler, GNCC Parking Attendant Susan Horner, 2012-2016 GNCC Tech Inspection Steward Cletis Miller and Margaret Johnston, mother of our own Debby Hawk and grandmother of eight-time GNCC champion, Barry Hawk.
On Saturday night, Kailub Russell came away with the Rider of the Year Honors for the seventh time with Simon Johnson claiming the Amateur Rider of the Year and Jojo Cunningham going home as GNCC Youth Rider of the Year, as well as AMA Youth Rider of the Year! Mark Myers took the Rough and Ready Pit Crew Award, with West Virginia emerging as Bike State Champions and KTM taking the Manufacturers Cup. We also honored several others we lost in 2019 including former GNCC Start and Finish Line Referee “Captain” Russ Bennett, Charles Hyde who was the father of four-time Blackwater 100 champion Mark Hyde, Josh Layton who was a big GNCC supporter and supported his nephews racing endeavors, KTM Truck Driver Nathan Martin, Wilma Kiger who was the grandmother of Coastal Racing’s Scott Kiger, Ed Lojak’s sister Renee Zrebny, and mother of our own Tommy Harris, Lillian Harris.
Last night we had the chance to ride in the Morgantown Christmas Parade and what a great time! Series Administrator Trevor Russell piloted one of the water trucks along with Dana Papanicolas, who answers the phone when you call the office and may even sign you up at the event. We also had our buddy “Deeds” and Danielle Myers walking along helping pass out candy and some other goodies while we had a group of motorcycles leading the way. Jessica Coombs and I, along with Melanie Marra, Andrew Fredrickson and Dustin Williamson from Racer X saddled up some bikes and rode in the parade. We even had another friend join us, Cameron, who was on a really cool old school flat track bike! This was a really cool experience and we hope to do this again next year with a little more planning to make something even cooler.
Now, let’s talk about the schedule. It’s finally out! We apologize for the long delay in getting this out but we’ve had to make some changes for 2020 and it took longer to finalize everything than originally planned. You can read the official PR HERE, but let’s break it down right here in this week’s edition of Quick Fill. First off, we’re headed back to Big Buck on February 22-23 to kick the season off in South Carolina. From there, we’ll have a weekend off before heading to Florida’s Wild Boar GNCC March 7-8, with The General GNCC on following weekend in Georgia.
Round four will see us return to Steele Creek with a big change for the weekend. If you attended the riders meetings as the banquet then you know we’ve got some issues we’ll need to work through. Due to waterway and land restrictions, we will not be able to race near the creek, so the course will be a few miles shorter than what we’ve had. Due to this short course, the traditional weekend schedule will be changed up for that event. Here’s the gist of it; the Micros will skip that round. The Youth ATVs will race their traditional 8am time slot, the Morning ATV race will go to 10AM, the Afternoon ATV race will be 1PM and the Youth Bikes will race at 4PM on Saturday. The short course won’t have as big an impact on these races as you guys usually run a shorter course there anyway.
On Sunday we’ll split the morning bike race into two segments. The first AM bike race will begin at 8am, the second AM bike race will begin at 11AM and the PM bikes will start at 1:30PM. We’ll announce in the following weeks which AM Bike classes will run which race but the tentative plan is to place C classes in the 8AM slot and WXC, Sportsman, and other Morning A and B classes in the 11AM slot. Keep in mind, that’s VERY tentative and we’ll make an announcement on which classes will race when sometime soon.
After Steele Creek, we’ll return to Camp Coker. If you’ve never attended the Camp Coker event, you’re missing out! This is a really cool facility that has a lot of fun away from the track in addition to a really fun racecourse as well. Yes, it is a sandy racetrack but it’s nothing like the deep sand we ride down in Florida. If you’ve been on the fence about coming to Coker, get off and get to the track! From there, we’ll come to our first change of the year. On May 2-3 we’ll be returning to the Mountain Ridge GNCC in Somerset, Pennsylvania. This is the place we raced for a number of years that has all the huge windmills throughout the property, and is always a really fun but challenging course.
From there we’ll head to Kentucky for the first time since 2013. We’ll be racing in Bowling Green at an all-new venue that promises to be a new favorite with The Gladiator GNCC. This facility is in the process of becoming a new powersports park complete with motocross tracks and more, but what better way to get the facility rolling than with a GNCC?! There will be a good, flat parking area and a variety of terrain throughout the facility. I had the opportunity to visit this venue last week and ride around a bit, and it definitely has potential to be a great place. Even cooler is that the guys operating the facility, Sye Head and Kash Moore, are avid racers themselves and have the support of ATV greats like Bill Ballance and Jeremiah Jones as well as big support from the town of Bowling Green as well.
The property sits in somewhat of a bowl with the large, flat parking area sitting at the bottom of some hilly terrain in the distance. This gives the feel sort of like the Colosseum in Rome. With this feel, The Gladiator GNCC felt like a natural fit for a name!
That leads us into The John Penton and onto Snowshoe before Summer Break. We did schedule a Rain Date of July 11-12 in the event that we do run into issues with one of those early season dates. When we return from Summer Break we’ll head back to the Summit Bechtal Reserve for The Mountaineer GNCC, then to Tomahawk in Odessa, New York before wrapping the season up with the Mason-Dixon and Ironman GNCCs.
Micros will race at 11 of the 13 rounds, skipping Steele Creek and Snowshoe while the Specialized Turbo eMTB GNCC National Championship returns in 2020. eMTBs will race at The General, Mountain Ridge, The Gladiator and Snowshoe before returning to Loretta Lynn’s once again for a special eMTB-only event on the Saturday prior to the AMA Amateur National Motocross Championship at Loretta Lynn’s. The eMTB series will then continue with The Mountaineer, Tomahawk and Mason-Dixon. Ironman will serve as a potential rain date for the eMTB series but if a rain date is not needed, Ironman will see a one-off fun and free eMTB event for anyone who owns an electric mountain bike and just wants to give racing a spin, courtesy of Specialized.
Finally, the 2020 GNCC Banquets will take place December 11th and 12th, 2020. As you can see, we’ve got a great schedule in store for 2020 and while we do have some interesting changes we feel like it’s going to be a great year of racing and we’re excited to get the ball rolling. Before we wrap this up, make sure you keep our ace photographer and Quick Fill contributor Ken Hill in your thoughts and prayers. Ken is going through some tough health issues right now and has been in the hospital for over a week now. Keep your chin up and heal up quick Kenny, we can’t wait to see you back behind the lens!
