After six years of playing and traveling with the All-Navy softball team, I just knew our son would want to grow up just like dad, playing ball. At five years old, Austin was off to his first tee-ball game. After the game, he cried all the way home. No matter how many times he swung his bat, that baseball never seemed to hit the ground.

“Come on Austin, let’s go to Fetlas.” I can’t remember what I had to get that day, but I can remember that once there, I couldn’t get Austin out of the seat of a go-kart that was on the floor. He continued to blow spit on the steering wheel with that fake motor sound for at least 15 minutes. He had to be doing at least mach 2. “ Dad, can you buy me a go-kart?” There was nothing less than a five horse motor in any of them. “No, you’re too young Austin, you’re only five.” Austin never let up, for a week straight, go-kart- go-kart-go-kart. It was getting to the point of really being irritating. We were back to Fetlas in a week, only to search for something a lot smaller. It didn’t take him long to get back up on that go-kart wheel with a salesman asking if we needed help. “Are you interested in a go-kart?” “Now what kind of parent would buy their 5-year-old son a go-kart,” I replied. “Oh, they have governors for them.” The next thing you know he’s showing us how to install it and were buying all the protective gear you can imagine. Finally, we are on our way home but not without listening to how crazy I was for doing what I just did in buying this thing.

We had better go to grandpas’, he has about 5 acres. Two pillows behind the back later and as many seat belts we could possibly find, our nerves were all but shot. I kept going over all the instructions with Austin until he finally just basically told me to hush and pull the rope. I can remember reaching down with about nine people standing around in complete silence. One quick pull and it fired. It didn’t take long to figure out it was one wheel drive because it threw dirt at least 5 feet when he took off. It was wide open. In a spilt second 50 things crossed my mind, the first being the gas is stuck and then the governor in which was still in my pocket. Austin was on a run away go-kart as he disappeared around the house. Everyone panicked as I was yelling, “No governor”! I can remember thinking as I was running what a knucklehead I was putting my son in something I didn’t even check out. We were so worried about the gear and strapping him in that I had forgotten all about the kart and the governor.

As we rounded the corner of the house falling over each other, there he was. In the middle of a dust cloud doing doughnuts. Out of the dust cloud he came directly toward us and still wide open. He passed us as he was heading to the other side of the yard. There was no suspension whatsoever on that “thing” because he was airborne with every hole and bump in the yard. Once again he’s headed toward us and for the first time I heard the motor wind down and then he stopped about a 100 feet away. What sounded like screams coming from him at first was only the sound of joy and laughter coming from under that big helmet he could barely hold up.

Day after day he was just tearing the heck out of grandpas’ yard. Grandpa threw the black flag. So for the next year and a half we found ourselves sneaking around the countryside trying to find places he could ride. The governor never did make it on that go-kart and baseball has never been discussed since.

With that being said, what are we going to do now? Austin wanted nothing to do with anything that didn’t have a motor. I didn’t know anything about racing or even if they had such a sport for kids. I soon found kids racing and Quarter Midgets on the internet. The race track was a 130 miles one way. We soon found ourselves trying to gather all the money it would take to purchase one. The family rallied and all the businesses around town thought I was off my rocker trying to raise money to put a 7-year-old kid in a race car. How we did it, I don’t know but we put it together and were at the first race of the season.

Arriving at the track with his Quarter Midget and tool box hanging out of the back of the truck, I can remember feeling way out of place. Nobody carried their Quarter Midget to a track in the back of a truck. It felt like all eyes were upon us. I was thinking to myself, “These people are serious.” For the first time in my life the definition of hillbilly kept crossing my mind. Austin didn’t give us time to think about just how poor we were feeling at the time. He was yelling, “let’s go.”

We soon found out that his foot didn’t lose any weight on the way down to Indy. He finished third his very first race in what was just a heat race. I didn’t know the difference between a heat or a feature; all I knew is that we got to race again. “You’re in the finals, boy,” I heard someone say. We’ll that’s just awesome, I thought. Little did we know, what was about to happen would send our lives for a loop. Austin strapped his helmet on and set out on a terror. I remember hanging on the fence in tears as he was carrying the checkered flag around the track. He looked like he had done it for years. What we didn’t know is just how much of a terror he was about to unleash.

Austin went on in his rookie year too win the Nationals, and two weeks later he won the Dirt Grand Nationals. Austin had never even seen a dirt track. Watching him hustle the wheel of that Quarter Midget on the dirt that day sent chills down are spine. I saw him sign his first autograph for a nationally published magazine out of Colorado directly after the race. Standing in the middle of that crowd, he looked as though he had been winning these big races for years. As parents not only were we in tears once again but we were speechless. We were the ones that didn’t know what to do. Austin almost went undefeated his rookie year. A mechanical failure cost him his first state championship; he finished 2nd. That really didn’t seem to matter, we had a multi-national champion on our hands.

What are we going to do now? Our lives had made a drastic change from the very first weekend. Everything now is based around racing schedules, maintenance, weekly preparations, and traveling the countryside every weekend. There is never a question about attending any race; we have to be there. We have found ourselves running to keep up with him. What started out to be just having some fun became very serious. Most kids will run Quarter Midgets for about seven years and most would love to have just a track championship. The accomplishments Austin has achieved (listed in this packet) in just a five-year period is unheard of. He has won everything, not just once but multiple times. For five years now week in, week out, indoors, outdoors, 12 months a year and over 60,000 miles it is all we know as a family. Who he is, or what he is, we have learned to not even question. All we can do now as a family and community is try and keep him going.

Who would have ever thought? The little boy slobbering all over the steering wheel in a go-kart that day in Fetlas would go down as one of the greatest drivers in the history of this sport. It’s an AWESOME feeling to know you can go to Quarter Midget tracks around this country and they know or know of AWESOME AUSTIN. Austin will make his debut in the 600cc Mini Sprints in 2006.

Austin will join local Nextel Cup Star Ryan Newman in the Quarter Midget Hall of Fame.