Many in the racing community ask where the youth is, but Natural Bridge Speedway is finding the kids and making fans of them. How? By simply answering a call.
Teacher Brandi Stevens asked Natural Bridge promoter Amanda Bradley if they could bring their students on a field trip to the track. Bradley jumped at the opportunity.
A bus load of 7- to 12-year-olds studying horsepower at Natural Bridge Elementary School’s summer camp “Dreams” learned the topic firsthand at the dirt oval.
Activities included tech official Danny Bryant explaining how horsepower works, building replicas of race cars and the school bus driver taking the kids out on track for a few laps.
The idea of hosting a school at the dirt track, though, didn’t start with Ms. Stevens. Natural Bridge Speedway racer Tyler Bare suggested it. His crewmember Randy Wolford serves on the Rockbridge County Public Schools board, which the elementary school is part of. Wolford put out a message to teachers encouraging them to reach out to the track for a visit.
“It became full circle,” Bradley said. “A driver’s idea, the school board being approached, a teacher being interested and a call to me to make it happen,” Bradley said. “It was a successful event for our track and the community.”
Bradley hopes this is the first of many opportunities for the local schools to learn about the sport.
“Next year, we will do it again, but with drivers for kids to talk to and real race cars for them to see,” Bradley said. “We made some new race fans, and they learned a lot about horsepower.”
For the near term, though, Natural Bridge Speedway has requested an empty school bus to be left at the track for July in August. They hope their fans “fill the bus” with school supplies.
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
