The embrace from his 14-year-old twins, Jordyn and Taylor, was all that mattered to Mark Kemmerer. He received the hug in victory lane after winning the sportsman feature on Saturday at Grandview Speedway in Bechtelsville, Pennsylvania.
“I can’t look at this photo without almost crying” Kemmerer, of Green Lane, Pennsylvania, said. “We’ve been trying and trying to get a win when the girls were at the track. When I won before, they missed the nights because of activities they had to attend.”
Last Saturday was no different. The twins performed community service for the Honor Society they are in. Afterwards, their grandmother, Gail, took them to the races, just in time to see their father win.
“When we started racing, they were five years old — they’d stay with their grandparents,” said Kemmerer. “Now, we are at a different part of life. They have activities, like field hockey, which are important to them.”
As with many families, the Kemmerers have a lot going on in their lives.
“Every family has its struggles,” Kemmerer, a self-employed contractor, said. “It is hard to be the dad of twin girls, own my own business, and go racing every weekend. [My wife] Kim and I do it on our own.”
Before Kemmerer took his car to victory lane, he needed a moment.
“I took an extra lap around the track to gather my feelings before I went to the scales,” said Kemmerer. “I thought of all the work that goes into racing, and all the sacrifices we made. It is so hard to be a little bit of everything to a family — balancing life outside of racing and life is hard to do. Racing can be a selfish sport.”
Tears flowed when his daughters joined Kemmerer to celebrate their win.
“The girls said, ‘We finally did it, Daddy,’” Kemmerer said. “Then, everyone was crying.”
Mark Kemmerer made two deals of note with his wife, one of which he needs to make good on now with the win.
“The first is that I can’t race without [my wife] being there with me,” Kemmerer said. “[The second,] Kim said once we get the win with the girls there, I have to finish putting the new addition onto our house.”
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.
