A different kind of win.

General discussions for car and semi-truck racers.
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timtrain35
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A different kind of win.

Post by timtrain35 »

Well tonight was the big night for my daughter, the Awana Grand Prix. She had a tough reputation to uphold winning first in speed and design last year. This year she wanted a hair brush car and it was a decent looking car, good enough for second in design. Speed wise, we tried a few different things that didn't work so well like using the stock wheel base. The car started the evening all right but got worse as the racing went on. I also made the rookie mistake of super gluing the axles in. Some of the super glue ended up traveling the axle down to the wheel.......not good. I ended up having to swap out the non-dominant front wheel on the fly right before the race. She got into the trophy round but got beat bad, coming in 5th out of 5 cars.

So who ended up winning speed? The young man who came over my house last Saturday for help in building his car. The same young man whose father isn't in the picture any more. And the same young man whose grandfather (his closest male influence) recently passed away. He went undefeated all night.

It was a perfect teachable moment for my little girl about how to be happy for someone else and how God always has a plan. She handled it with a level of maturity I've never seen from her before. The young man? He couldn't believe it all happened and probably won't get much sleep tonight.

Looking back on our three year (and two kids) racing career thus far, the plastic trophies we've accumulated now don't seem to mean that much. This is the win that means the most.
Oddzilla
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Re: A different kind of win.

Post by Oddzilla »

That's awesome!

:clap:
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drathbun
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Re: A different kind of win.

Post by drathbun »

What a fantastic story to share, thank you.
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whodathunkit
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Re: A different kind of win.

Post by whodathunkit »

Right on!
The best trophies are the cars and the memorys spent makeing them.
What type of automobile can be spelled the same forwards & backwards?
Pacfanweb
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Re: A different kind of win.

Post by Pacfanweb »

Great story.

My daughter had a similar experience this year at her Powderpuff Derby. She finished 3rd in speed last year.

This year, new troop and I volunteered to help anyone who needed it, or at least to help the girls make their cars go faster. No expert, but our results had been pretty good so far, and I felt so sorry for the little girls whose cars stopped before the finish line. Some folks claim they "didn't build for speed, we went for originality or craftsmanship", but the bottom line is, EVERYONE's car races. And nobody likes to not even be close to competitive.

So, I volunteered. Four girls from the troop came on various weekends, including my daughter. They had a blast polishing axles, wheel bores, sanding bodies, etc.

So race day comes. I had thought about holding back a tweak or two for my daughter's car, but time ran out and we didn't do anything extra.

Our troop's cars swept the first four spots. My daughter took 3rd again. 2nd was her best friend, whose car broke the Thursday before the race and we build her a new one that night.

My daughter learned a valuable lesson about taking pride in other's successes that she assisted in.
And she also got 4th in Originality, which helped a bit.

Oh, and the only girls that didn't place from our troop were the ones that didn't come to our clinics....and they were NOT happy about it. Don't tell me girls aren't competitive. ;)
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Aron
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Re: A different kind of win.

Post by Aron »

Great stories! Always fun to read the positive stories :thumbup:
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