The apple never falls far from the tree....
My son, Dale Simms (aka Dalezilla), is a pretty avid BMX racer at the Santa Clara PAL BMX track. Dale has qualified for some of the tougher competitions in his meager 7 months of racing - including the Redline Cup Western Championships in Ontario, CA (which he did not go to because of a boy scout trip he wanted to go to instead) and the ABA Silver Dollar Nationals in Reno, NV just a few weeks ago.
I decide to take Dale to Reno just to see how he would do against the more competitive crowd than what we find at the local track. We stayed at the Grand Sierra just 5 miles from the Reno Event Center where the races were being held. The Event Center has an indoor auditorium where the laid down the track and an indoor (but unheated) practice facility next door that is connected by a covered shute. It is a good thing the race was indoors because there was snow on the ground in Reno that weekend and it was cold! This was our chance to see what the real competition would look like. Dale was entered in the 7 Mixed Open (7 year old boys and girls of all skill levels) and the 7 Novice.
The competition started on Friday night with a pre-race trophy dash. 155 motos altogether. Dale looked pretty miserable at first - finish last in all of his practice sessions. But as the night wore he began to comfortable and started picking up some speed. He was also practicing his balance at the starting gate and getting better with every gate! He never qualified for the Mixed Open main event but in his 2nd attempt in his age catagory, he blasted out of the gate like I've never seen before and led start to finish to move into the main event. In the main event he came out of the gate slow but started picking the riders off by the time they were in the first turn. He just couldn't catch them fast enough and ended up in 4th place. Not bad! I can be super proud of that! But tomorrow, when Nationals start, it will be much tougher because the field size will almost triple.
On Day 1 of the Silver Dollar Nationals, Dalezilla showed up with his game face on and it was hard to stop him. He breezed through his qualifiers and and landed the semi-finals for both the Mixed Opens and Catagory. In the Mixed Open Main, Dale finish at the back of the pack due to a poor gate but still got a trophy for his efforts. In his catagory race, he was stunning. He came out of the gate hard and landed himself in 3rd. He swapped paint with the boy in 2nd for a little bit and then passed him coming out of the last turn to land a 2nd place finish after all.
Way to go Dalezilla!!!
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