|
The "evolution" of the EESCC sponsored Evolution High Performance Driving School
By Paula Loftin
It wasn't that long ago that an Evolution High Performance Driving School was just a gleam in my eye. I remember clearly the events that led to my desire to participate in one… it started with a discussion I had with Doug Drouet about the car I ended up buying, the Toyota 86. He encouraged me to buy it, saying I could drive it right off the showroom floor and onto an autocross course, and that's basically what I ended up doing! However, I bought it so late in the year that I had the chance to go to only one event, the final EESCC autocross at Willamette Pass. What a perfect first event! I had a blast, and was totally hooked, but I had the whole winter ahead of me with no driving events left to attend.
During that long winter, I learned about the Evolution Driving School, talked to folks who had attended one, and began to look for one to attend myself. I found only one event on the west coast that year, at Crow's Landing, but had already missed the closing date. It would have been an exceptionally long drive anyway, so I started trying to contact someone at Evolution to find out when they had a school scheduled for the Pacific Northwest… and got no response. I tried several times over the next year or two, and continued to have no success in making contact or finding an event. It was very disappointing. Then COVID came along and everything was on hold. When restrictions were lifted and we were finally looking at the possibility of having events again I tried once more to find an Evo school… with the same disappointing results as before.
or charlatans.
I guess I should confess here that all this time, I was just looking for an opportunity for ME to attend a school… I hadn't thought of any other options. But with continued failure, I tried a different tack… instead of asking when and where Evo was going to be holding a school in the Pacific Northwest, I asked "what it would take to HAVE a school in the Pacific Northwest"…. And BINGO! I got an immediate response! All we needed was a club to sponsor it, a date, and a venue. Well, I figured, how hard could that be?!?
I think the rest of the story is well known by everyone in EESCC. The club agreed to sponsor the event, and by an incredible stroke of good luck, we got a date at Sanderson Field in Shelton, Washington. The rest just fell into place. We had a well attended event in 2022, and a waiting list of folks who were interested in attending in 2023.
The 2022 school was primarily filled with EESCC members, and anyone else who got registered in time. This year, a few of us from EESCC will be attending again, plus the folks from the waiting list from last year, and then the rest who got registered in time.
I am grateful that the club is still willing to sponsor the event, and as I write this, we have already filled the 2023 school! Again, we also have a substantial number of people on a waiting list, so I am beginning to think this could be an annual event for the foreseeable future. We will always reserve spots for club members, so if you have an interest, please let me know so I can keep you in mind for next year's school!
We have made one adjustment for this year's school, specifically that we will rent cones and timing equipment from a couple of clubs from the Shelton area, rather than haul up all of our equipment, to simplify the logistics. With luck, we will be able to continue in this manner in future years.
In a recent conversation with Mike Johnson of Evo, I learned that we will always have to cap our registration at 24 drivers due to time and space constraints associated with running on an airstrip. In the future, should we be able to find another venue with a wider chunk of pavement, we could certainly reconsider the location of the school. At this point though, Sanderson is a great venue, at a very reasonable price, albeit a bit of a drive for folks in our area.
In closing, I want to thank the club again for its unwavering support of this very special educational program. We are providing a valuable service that is apparently in high demand, and I plan to continue to advocate for it as long as we have the interest and support of Pacific Northwest drivers.
You Might be a Duck Fan if ...
By Tim Steck
You might be a Duck Fan if your mother-in-law had season tickets to the UO Women’s Basketball and the Track & Field games before the records were even computerized.
I actually married into a Duck family back in 2003 and Peggy’s mom, who was a UO grad, had season tickets to the Women’s Basketball games since … well we asked the UO office and they said they could only see info since they computerized the records which was in 1996. I’m not really sure when was the first year she got WBB Season tickets.
I started to go to the games in 2003 which were held in Mac Court and have only missed a very few since then, probably could count them on one hand.
Matthew Knight Arena was opened in 2011 and the 1st WBB game was on 1/23/2011 vs Oregon State. The score was Oregon 81 – Oregon State 72. It was the first sold out game (any sport, men or women) at Matthew Knight Arena with the highest attendees to date. Per the research I did, there were 12,369 people there when the arena only holds 12,364 – go figure. All other sold-out games were listed as 12,364 attendees.
You might be a Duck Fan if you went to the WNIT WBB Tournament games in 2010.
The OU women’s team didn’t make the NCAA tournament in March 2010 but was invited to the WNIT tournament. We went to the three games on March 18th, 23rd and when they lost to Cal on March 25th, all of these games were held in MAC Court.
You might be a Duck Fan if you went to watched the UO WBB team play the Pilots in Portland.
Twice we drove up to Portland to the Chiles Center on the campus of the Portland Pilots just to watch a single game against the Ducks. On 12/5/14 we beat the Pilots (72-49) and they had an attendance of 313 for that game. Last season on 12/4/2021 we drove up to the Chiles Center in Portland to watch the ladies beat the Pilots again with a score of 62-59.
You might be a Duck Fan if you went to every PAC-12 WBB Tournament since 2017.
Peggy and I have gone to every PAC-12 Tournament since 2017. They are always around the 1st weekend in March. In 2017 and 2018 they were in Seattle and but starting 2019 they have been in Las Vegas with the exception of 2021 which had no spectators because of Covid-19. During the past years of the PAC-12 Tournaments we have had other close friends that went with us including Jim and Bonnie Mueller (every year), Bill and Cheryl Baugh (2 years), Jerry and Cherrie Braunberger (1 year). OK, we like some Beaver fans. We are going in 2023 too but this time it will be just us. I have purchased the tickets for the tournaments throughout the years and this year they messed up with our seat selection (we usually get the same seats every year) and for some reason this year another sales rep gave our seats away but our rep made it right by giving us front row Floor seats for the 11 games in the PAC-12 WBB Tournament. We will be seated around the 3-point line. We have never sat on the floor level for any basketball game and we will have to see what it will be like.
You might be a Duck Fan if you flew to Las Vegas just for a mini two-day tournament.
In late December 2017, we and the Mueller’s flew to Las Vegas on the 20th, the games were on 21st and 22nd then we turned around and flew back to Eugene on the 23rd. We won both games by 22 and 41 points, it was worth the trip.
You might be a Duck Fan if you saw the UO WBB play in the First and Second round NCCA Tournament in March 2018.
These two games were at our home court in Eugene which made it nice to go to. We won both of those games 88 – 45 and the second game was 101 – 73.
You might be a Duck Fan if you drove to Walnut Creek, CA to watch the WBB play a mini two-day tournament over the Thanksgiving holiday.
In November 2018, Peggy and I drove down to Walnut Creek (just east of San Francisco) to watch the Ducks play. Walnut Creek is Sabrina Ionescu’s home town. It was just under 500 miles and under 8 hours of driving. We drove down on Wednesday; Thursday was Thanksgiving and the games were on Friday and Saturday. We drove back home after the last game on Saturday. This was the only time I can remember ever being away from “home” for Thanksgiving. That felt a little strange. But we found a restaurant that served a more or less traditional Thanksgiving dinner and we still had a “Thanksgiving” dinner. It wasn’t even close to what my mom used to have when I was a kid or what Peggy does now.
You might be a Duck Fan if you went to see the UO WBB team play in the First and Second round NCCA Tournament in March 2019.
These two games were at our home court in Eugene which made it nice to go to. We won both of those games 78 – 40 and the second game was 91 – 68.
You might be a Duck Fan if you went to see the UO WBB team play in the NCCA Regionals in March 2019.
5 days after the above 1st and 2nd Round games, we drove to Portland and watch the WBB team beat two more teams heading their way to the Final Four that year.
You might be a Duck Fan if you watched the UO ladies play Team USA on November 9th, 2019.
What a game. This was the very first game that the WBB team had played this season and with an attendance of 11,530 (almost a sellout) the then # 3 Oregon’s women basketball team handled the U.S. Women’s National Team its first lost by a college women’s team in 20 years with a score of 93-86. They are only the second college team that has ever beaten Team USA.
You might be a Duck Fan if you still went to every home game no matter what their record was.
We went to all the home games in the 2012 – 13 season when they only won 4 games ALL YEAR. We played Samford University (Birmingham, AL) on 12/28/12 and the attendance was only 1,118. No that’s not a typo. The good news was that this was one of 4 games they won with a score of 72 – 61. Our next game was with Portland (in Portland) and it has an attendance of only 438.
You might be a Duck Fan if you drove to San Diego to watch the Lady Ducks play in the San Diego Invitational.
We started our journey about 6:00pm on Friday night December 16th, 2022 and we drove straight through to Torrance, CA which is just west of Los Angeles. It was about a 13-hour drive. We stopped in to the Del Amo Fashion Center to do some shopping in the 8th largest shopping center in the US. It was big, too big for Peggy. I use to live just a hop, skip and a jump from this mall and back in the 80’s and early 90’s. I have shopped there many times. We shopped for only a couple of hours. We then got back in our car and continued a couple more hours to our motel in San Diego. We had Sunday and Monday to do some touristy things before the games started on Tuesday. The Ducks won their 1st game and we also watched the other teams play to see who our competition would be on Wednesday. As expected, it was the #3 Ohio State team. Our hotel was within walking distance of the arena which made it nice because we didn’t have to drive to the games or worry about parking. Wednesday came around and we checked out, walked over to the arena and watched the two losers of Tuesdays games play each other. Now it was the Ducks turn to play Ohio State. Ohio State, being the #3 team in the nation, I wasn’t surprised that our Lady Ducks didn’t beat them. The game was over around 5:30, we walked back to our car which was still parked in the hotel’s parking lot and left for home. We started the 15-hour drive back home and pulled into our driveway just before 9:00 Saturday morning. Needless to say, we were tired.
We are Duck Fans, especially for the UO Women Basketball team!!
Go Ducks!!
Please scroll down to view ALL of our Sponsors. Thank You.
|
We Love
Our Country!!!
