USAC & HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS COLLABORATE ON SCALE PROJECT
By: Richie Murray – USAC Media
Speedway, Indiana (August 11, 2023)………USAC officials Dave Thompson, Matt McCarty and Rich Forman have gone up and down road as series officials with the USAC National series for several years now.
Many topics come up in conversation during their often-lengthy commutes, but one in particular came up recently that brought not only all of them on board, but also both students from the local high school as well as the racing community to pitch in and make the newest project a reality – coming up with a new set of scales for USAC racing.
Once given the go-ahead to pursue the project, the work began. One of the interesting attributes of Thompson is that, by day, he serves as a guidance counselor at Avon High School, located just west of Indianapolis, Ind. in addition to his duties as an official and chaplain for USAC.
It was at Avon High School where Thompson enlisted Avon’s Business/Tech Ed teacher Chris Hill to assist on the project. Hill had contributed to previous projects and was eager to introduce USAC’s scale building project to current students, making it a real-world application of what they’ve learned in the classroom.
“I like bringing real world projects to students to see what they can come up with,” Thompson said. “Chris found some students that were interested, and then we all met up to start the planning process.”
Three of Hill’s students, Ike Coleman, Rexton Kemp and Patrick Tiernan, were tasked with designing the scales. Given the parameters, they soon conjured up a plan, and put their noses to the grindstone.
However, another part of real world application is obstacles, and this group had to overcome a few in order to get the job done.
“We had a hiccup in getting the material,” Thompson noted. “I was ghosted by a supplier and then had to find someone that could bend the aluminum to fit what they had designed. We knew we needed to do some welding of the material to make it all work, and that was another process,” Thompson said. “People were booked up or couldn’t do what we needed them to do. I had asked numerous guys at the track, and no one could make it happen.”
Needing other facets of the project to be completed, and needing somebody to turn to, Thompson reached out to his fellow racing brethren, including a USAC winning team, crewman and driver Mitchel Moles, the 2022 USAC NOS Energy Drink Midget National Championship Rookie of the Year and a current frontrunner and winner on the USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship circuit.
“I reached out to (crewman) Connor Ridge, and he told me that Mitchel would do it,” Thompson revealed. “I gathered up all the materials and took them to the Reinbold-Underwood Motorsports and Mitchel made quick work of the welding.”
The new scales made their debut during the USAC NOS Energy Drink Indiana Sprint Week Presented By Honest Abe Roofing round at Bloomington Speedway on July 28. The scale pads needed a bit of adjusting underneath the platform to begin the night, but in the end, everything went off without a hitch.
Warner Steel helped with the purchase of the aluminum for the project and bended the pieces to fit the plan.
To make a plan come together, sometimes it takes a village constructed of several individuals pulling towards a common goal. For USAC’s new scale project, Thompson made use of the resources from two different worlds – the local high school and the racing community – in order to unite and bring a plan to fruition.
“Collaboration seems difficult sometimes, but almost always is worth the effort,” Thompson reflected. “It’s great stuff and it makes my heart happy.”
