With help from an important community organization, a new element was added to car racing for young boys in Boissevain.
The boy’s club at the Mennonite Brethren Church held their annual car races and rally on Sunday, March 17. According to one of the leaders, Duane Thiessen, the event was a success, especially with a new piece of equipment.
“It went really well,” Thiessen stated. “The new track worked great and everybody had a great time.”
The club, which races wooden model cars, was able to pick up a new aluminum racing track this year. Theissen said they had been running the cars on an old wooden track that could be as much as 40 years old, used by other community clubs before the youth group. It was past its due date, and in need of replacement.
In September, there was the annual event at Boissevain School where kids’ groups collect registrations for the upcoming year. It was then that a form from the Boissevain & Morton Foundation was dropped off. The group decided they could not go wrong by applying for a new track. Thiessen said they applied for $1,200 for the new piece of equipment, not knowing how much if any they would receive. The total was $1,195, which they discovered when the cheques were handed out in November.
“We had no idea until they had the meeting at the curling club. We were very pleased. We’re very grateful to the organization.”
The new track, picked up from Iowa, not only runs very smoothly. Connected to a laptop with appropriate software, it can track the cars running in miles per hour. Using measurement techniques, it can turn the wooden cars to NASCAR on screen and sort of pro-rate their speed. Thiessen said the fastest car in the tournament was averaging 200.11 miles an hour. This feature makes the races that much more exciting, particularly as some races had the first to third cars only a mile and a half different in speed.
“The kids were super pumped,” Thiessen said. “They were cheering for the cars, running up and down the track. It was great.”
They are also able to easily calibrate points, and set up the races. Overall, it makes the rally that much more enjoyable.
Thiessen said the boys, in grades two to six, had nearly 40 entries show up for the rally. Each car was able to race in 12 heats.
The cars begin as blocks of wood. The participants make a car out of them, and weight will be added if needed to bring them to specifications. They also decorate them themselves, with Thiessen saying there was an array of different designs, some more elaborate than others. This is similar to Cub car races from an earlier generation.
The club meets Wednesday evenings starting October. They play games and have a storytime, and also do projects. This past year, with wood donated from Springhill Lumber in Killarney, they made functional gumball machines. They were a lot of work, but the kids were able to get some experience with handsaws and power tools. Thiessen said he is not sure why, but the club has become very popular recently, with around 45 boys registering the last three years.
The race day was their last meeting for this year, with a windup party also held.
Thiessen said the new track is a great asset for them. It can be run without the laptop, so he can see other groups getting some use out of it. Again, they are thankful for the assistance they received from the Foundation and feel they have something to benefit kids in the community for a long time.
“People who saw it said it was very impressive,” he stated. “Hopefully, the track will be well taken care of and will be good for decades to come.”
by PAUL RAYNER, Recorder staff