The 2011 Champaign County Sports Car Club year is beginning. We had a great Awards Banquet, we have a new board, and we have a complete schedule for autocrosses, club meetings and board meetings. The rally schedule is almost filled. And we have some new things happening with the website also! Here are some details:
At the 2010 CCSCC Awards Banquet we crowned new autocross champions, new rally champions and new overall club champions. Reports will be forthcoming on the website. We also had lots of gag gifts and lots of tickets from the club meeting and door prizes drawn. Several important awards were given:
- The Jeff Stevenson Award for outstanding contribution to the club by non-board members was given to Cathy and Bill Burkholder for all their contributions to the club. Talk about a great couple! They have adopted CCSCC and are at all the autocrosses and club meetings and always help people out at autocrosses. They deserve the award that is in memory the the late Jeff Stevenson who was that type of person also. Their name will be put on the trophy along with other winners (including their son Robert Burkholder, who is now a board member). The trophy is Jeff’s helmet and it will be put in the trailer for display and possible loaner use.
- The Sparkplug award. As president I am honored to award this award to two wonderful board members that have helped us make CCSCC work for the last few years. Tom Ingles has single handedly learned and helped us adopt the AXWare program to time our autocrosses, the new timing equipment and the van organization. We couldn’t have done it without him. Tom spends lots of time with the pre-registration website and makes our autocross system work, along with the whole autocross committee. As Registrar, Tom keeps track of members and participants and works hard to keep our mailing list up to date. We need to recognize these board members that go far beyond what their job calls for them to do.
- The other Sparkplug award goes to vice president Sandy Grable, who not only presided in my absence at meetings, but agreed to take on the vice president’s job when our previous vice president resigned. She has helped me with suggestions and has become a confidant that I can depend upon to hold my famous temper in place and help the whole club to get along better. And she is a very good autocrosser too!
Altogether, it was a great awards banquet and enjoyed by all.
The start of the CCSCC year brings us, thanks to last year’s board and high autocross participation in great shape. We have all the equipment we need to run our usual fine autocross program, except for a large timing display, which we will purchase early this year. We have our equipment stored in our boxvan and it is organized and easily used. We have paid the insurance for next year as well as finishing paying for last year. We have scheduled 23 autocrosses ( 4 of which we have offered to the Heart of Illinois Sports Car Club for their use), 15 rallies, an autocross school and a TestNTune. Arrangements have been made for the sites and Rally Chair Jerry White is recruiting rallymasters. We have a new board in place with a lot of familiar faces and are prepared for the new season, which starts on Sat. Feb. 26 with a short rally. Our first autocross is Saturday, March 26 and the autocross school / TestNTune will be held on April 9th and 10.
If there is anything that is clouding the year, it is the lack of participation in the rally program last year. The rally committee will look at that concern at a rally committee meeting on Sunday, January 23 at Jerry White’s house. Of concern, and rightly so, is how we can entice new entrants to enjoy the sport of road rallying.
Autocross Chair Dennis Miller will announce an autocross committee meeting soon and Sandy Grable’s special committee to develop training and reference material for our timing system will meet on Saturday, January 22 at GarageMahal at 2 pm. All club members are welcome and encouraged to attend. We need your ideas!
There are a few changes in how we do things this year. Insurance Chair Robert Burkholder will be handling insurance. Formerly he was “Waivers Nazi”, er waivers chair and handled that job with style and grace. Well, at least style! Since the waivers are actually done for the insurance company, I decided to expand his job to include communications with the insurance agent also.
Safety, which is always an important part of CCSCC’s program (why do you think we are still doing this after 54 years when so many other clubs have fallen by the wayside?) will be undergoing some changes also. The Autocross Safety Stewards will be trained and supervised by the Safety Steward, making them even more independent of the autocross committee. Safety Stewards will be trained at the autocross school, and you will have to attend that class to be a safety steward at a CCSCC event this year.
So…. it is a good great start to another CCSCC year. Come enjoy the hard work this and previous board have done to make CCSCC the premier sports car club in the midwest!