At the Mountain View Raceway awards banquet, open wheel modified driver Kyle Shadden was caught off guard. He received the track’s sportsmanship award.
“I was speechless, and I’m not a speechless kind of person,” the Dayton, Tennessee, open wheel modified driver said. “I almost didn’t get out of my seat. To be put in a category where that many people think of you, it’s not a common thing.”
The award might have surprised Shadden, but it didn’t surprise others. When someone needed help at the track, Shadden often rose to the occasion — and that included helping the actual track.
“Fortunately, I work for my family business,” Shadden said. “I can pull away at times when others who work nine-to-fives cannot. When [promoter] Jesse [Lowe] needed help, he would put it on Facebook. If there was something I could help with, I just ran up there and did it, from airing a tire on a piece of equipment to loaning a piece of equipment. There’s a lot of people who want to race every weekend, but if that piece of equipment wasn’t there or that grader’s tire was not aired up or somebody’s not there to run the packer cars, we weren’t going to be able to race.”
Shadden estimates that he, his father, his brother and one of his buddies “probably made a thousand laps” at Mountain View this year behind the wheel of the packer car.
“It’s not like it’s work,” Shadden insisted. “It was a blast.”
Nevertheless, without packing the track, racing doesn’t happen.
“It’s stuff that most people don’t think of,” Shadden said. “I had no idea of what went on.”
Sportsmanship extends beyond just running packer cars — it also involves fellow racers.
“When I first started out, I struggled,” Shadden said. “A guy named Joe parked a few spots down from me and he came over one day [and said], ‘Can I help you?’ I was like, ‘Dude, anything you can do to help.’ He would watch me and say, ‘I think we need to try this’ — he done this for the whole season and most of the next season. He eventually said, ‘You don’t need me. I’m learning from you now.’ I asked, ‘What can I do to pay you back?’ He said, ‘When I first started, somebody done this for me and made me promise I would help [others] anyway I could.’”
Karma is real, as Shadden proved. How can you help? Kyle Shadden has a suggestion.
“We all need help,” Shadden said. “Anybody that thinks they could do anything in this sport alone is crazy. Nobody does this alone. There are always people struggling, and it often doesn’t cost a thing to help.”
The Outside Groove Executive Editor has covered motorsports since 2000. His many awards include the 2019 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Jim Hunter Writer of the Year and the 2013 Russ Catlin Award for Excellence in Motorsports Journalism.
