Page 9 - Sanger Herald 10-4-18 E-edition

SangerSports
SANGER HERALD * PAGE 1B * THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2018
Del Rey racing team wins national championship
By Rob Krider
Sanger Herald correspondent
Our little racing team from Del Rey took a big road trip. We packed up our Acura Integra Honda Challenge racing cars and headed to Austin, Texas for the 2018 National Auto Sport Association (NASA) National Championships held at the Circuit of the Americas.
The locals call the track COTA, and it is home to the United States Formula One race and Moto GP.
On this particular weekend there would be no fancy European Formula One drivers and their open wheeled cars, it would be the United States National Championships where the best road racing drivers in the country converge to battle it out on the track.
Our team, Double Nickel Nine Motorsports, was taking no chances. We painstakingly went through every nut and bolt on our cars and tested them repeatedly at Buttonwillow Raceway to make sure they were ready for the big
Redline Photo
Keith Kramer, left, and Rob Krider, center, celebrate their national championship victory in Austin, Texas, with champagne and cowboy hats from Toyo Tires. The team finished 1-2 at the 2018 National Auto Sport Association (NASA) National Championships.
we did.
During the qualifying
session on Sept. 21, our team was looking very good. I set the fastest qualifying time and would start the Sept. 22 race on pole, and my partner at DNN Motorsports, Keith Kramer, set the second fastest time so he would start on the front row next to me. Our blue/orange/ silver Acura Integras from Del Rey, Calif. would have the entire front row for the qualifying race.
Everybody else in the country would have to follow us into Turn 1. The race formats at the National Championships were standing starts, using the Formula One starting lights. Five lights would appear across the top of the track. When the lights turned off, it was time to drag race down the front straight and try to thread the needle into Turn 1.
Keith and I both took a little body damage as a lot of cars tried to occupy a small space in Turn 1 during the first lap. I was able to come out relatively
unscathed and win the race. Keith was not as lucky and had to settle for a fifth place and a nice dent to his driver’s door that Olson Auto Body in Sanger will have to fix.
The good news was that race finish just set the starting order for the final race of the weekend on Sept. 23 — the race that actually mattered, the National Championship.
Our pit crew worked all night on the cars ensuring the body damage we received during the qualifying race was resolved enough that we could start the race. Our chief mechanics, Stephen Young, Brandon Lindlahr, Travis Kramer, Randy Krider, Art Cortez and Bryce Lindlahr were key to our success during the weekend.
They worked on the cars with meticulous care ensuring they were fast and ready. On Sunday morning, the cars were cleaned and prepared for battle.
I started the
See Del Rey, Page 2B
show. Wehadalottodo,as
one of our cars burned to the ground just six weeks prior to the National Championships during a regional race, so it needed to be quickly repaired. In just six weeks we rebuilt the entire car (engine, wiring and suspension) and made adjustments to get it ready for the 20-turn.
3.41 mile monster of a race track called the Circuit of the Americas.
We took 32 crew members with us to Texas and were set up in Garage 18. I’ll admit we were pretty spoiled at COTA. The garage had its own men’s and women’s bathrooms, polished floors and immediate access to pit lane.
We had never had it so good at a race track; COTA truly is a first class venue. The course itself was beautifully maintained and smooth with plenty of runoff area if a driver got over his or her head. It allowed us to drive the cars at their full potential. Essentially, it meant we could drive the cars with reckless abandon — which
Sanger wins a thriller vs. rival Madera
By Mike Nemeth
Sanger Herald
Running backs coach Abel Gallardo said he had a good feeling during the dinner his Sanger High football team has every year before homecoming night.
“We’re beat up,” he said about a half hour after his Apaches outlasted a resilient Madera team 36-33 on Sept. 28. “Sometimes it can wear on you. But it didn’t seem to phase them (at the Eagles Hall dinner). One guy goes down, another comes up.
“They’re fine. The camaraderie. And I’ll credit them — Madera’s a good team (now 4-2 for the season). (Still) I felt we had the edge. Because we’re Sanger football.”
Gallardo said this as he sat in one of the locker room’s red folding chairs watching an amped up Apache team making enough noise to raise any nearby ghosts from their haunts. The week before, the Apache ball players had completed another tough game on the road in Paso Robles, pulling out a win from yet another team determined to defeat them at all cost.
Head coach Jorge Pena put the game in perspective when he addressed his players minutes later, allowing the noise level to dampen mostly on its own. “This easily could have gone the other way,” he said. “What happened tonight, we had a battle. Right when we thought we had these guys, then they came back. They took charge of the game there
Mike Nemeth / Sanger Herald
Orlando Douglas, No. 24, plows through the Madera defensive line on his way to one of three touchdowns on the night.
alongside Groft on each play when the Coyotes controlled the ball there at the end. His job, like the others on the line, was to derail the run and crush any passing opportunity, which with Nelson’s effective completions proved rather difficult.
But Barrera said all the penalties and Coyotes’ abilities didn’t shake the Apache resolve. “We got up, played the calls and trusted our coaches,” he said. “All of the summer workouts, getting up at 5 in the morning, all the conditioning were built for this. Size don’t matter.”
Barrera is listed at 5-foot- 8 and 225 pounds and faced off against opponents a head taller.
The defense got the job of stopping Madera with 5:22 minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. That’s when senior running back Orlando Douglas punched through on a 3-yard run for one of his three touchdowns on the evening.
The Coyotes got the ball and the enviable position of controlling the game and the clock so the Apaches would have no recourse should they score. And Nelson and the rest of his Madera crew wanted to take full advantage of the opportunity.
Douglas, like Groft, felt some of the responsibility for the closeness of the score. He had just returned from a rushing injury exacted in the game against Paso Robles’ Bearcats. “I messed up,” he said. “I’ve got to overcome those mistakes and get better.”
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for a minute.”
That minute began before
the half and after Sanger put up two touchdowns in rapid succession in the first quarter. Madera senior quarterback Colt Nelson completed 25 of 35 attempts for 223 yards and three touchdowns with all of them in the second and third quarters, forcing Sanger’s depleted defense to adjust tactics to limit the damage and put a stranglehold on the Coyotes in the final seconds to gut out a win.
Senior defender Jude Groft shouldered some
of that responsibility. He wears No. 56 and is the big guy on the Sanger defense who immediately takes out the biggest members of the opposing teams. “I messed up. A lot,” he said. “(But) we fought the adversity and came back.”
Groft said he didn’t know exactly what signaled that turnaround in the Apache defensive line. “We just sucked it up,” he said. “(We said) we’re going to have to play the guys. They were getting dirty, talking trash at the end. Our guys worked harder. Got it done.
“There’s a lot of guys
injured. We just played for the guys who can’t.”
Senior defensive end Aaron Salcido, an integral part of the line, said he expects to return from the injured list this week against Bullard. The game starts at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Tom Flores Stadium. Sophomore running back/ linebacker Morgan Privett returned in time to face the Coyotes. The injured list stands at about eight players.
Two very big motivators also encouraged the Apaches. The game marked homecoming — Adrian
Mercado and Rachel Pimentel were crowned king and queen amidst some pretty spectacular fireworks at halftime — and Tom Flores attended the game. He had been in town for a meet and greet at the new Sanger Athletic Hall of Fame with a video crew from the Raiders’ organization following his every move, even the ceremonial coin toss at the beginning of the game.
So winning wasn’t just something nice. Most considered it mandatory.
Junior defender Mark Barrera, No. 58, lined up
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