On a roll

Amanda Eagle is too young to drive a car, but she’s already a racing champion.

The 15-year old Mt. Spokane High School freshman recalled how she felt as she stepped out on the big All American Soap Box Derby stage last year in Akron, Ohio and Queen’s song “We Are The Champions” swelled around her.

“They treat you like a celebrity,” said Eagle, who was one of three racers with the best times in the Derby’s 2005 West Coast rally – a 16-race saga that qualified her to compete among 500 kids in Akron.

Eagle’s now retired from racing. “I’ve now done everything I could do,” she said.

But Saturday in the Spokane Valley, she was helping other local kids with the same dream, telling them to “tuck down and drive straight.” She and her mother, Janet Eagle, helped time the heats of this year’s Spokane Soap Box Derby. Her dad, Dan Eagle, is the local derby’s president and race director.

Saturday’s race was a high-stakes event for the youngest children competing in the stock car division. The winner will represent the Spokane area in Akron at the All American World Championship on July 22.

The division in which they competed Saturday is for kids ages eight to 13. The rules say the youngest racers and their cars, constructed from $500 stock kits from the All American Soap Box Derby, must together weigh no more than 200 pounds. There’s also a Super Stock Car division and a Master’s division for older kids.

Racing in pairs, the boys and girls perched their bullet-shaped fiberglass cars atop the starting platform at the top of the long hill on Skipworth Street between 20th and 24th avenues. They stared at the 600-foot strip of asphalt stretching out ahead. They bent their helmeted heads and went into a tuck as a race official yanked a lever and released them.

A vivid, day-glo-colored rainbow shone down on the scene of small-town Americana. Old Glory flapped in the breeze, and a toddler giggled on his front porch as the racers in their stock cars whizzed by at speeds up to 25 miles per hour. Other kids sold cookies and pop for 50 cents.

This year’s winner and “Queen of the Hill”: Brittney Katterfeld, an eighth-grader at Freeman Middle School. She remained undefeated all day and is excited about going to Akron.

“I feel the work of five years of racing and working on my car has paid off,” the 15-year old said after the race.

It wasn’t only the winning that provided teachable moments.

Samantha Utter, a 12-year-old who attends Borah Elementary School in Coeur d’Alene, sobbed after she lost her heat to her stepbrother Devin Katterfeld, Brittney’s brother.

Race director Eagle hugged Samantha and comforted her. Three of her girlfriends from Freeman rushed up to console her as well. Minutes later, she was laughing and joking with them.

“I’m not the best in the world,” she confided to a reporter.

But Samantha said she races anyway – for the sheer joy and freedom of it. She built her own black car and named it “Sammy.”

“It’s just a blast!” she said. “You feel the speed, and it’s always a challenge. You have to concentrate. It’s like riding my horse, Peaches,” she said.

The parents and other adults who support the Derby hope more kids will catch the racing bug.

Joy Katterfeld-Utter, of Mica, Samantha’s stepmother and Brittney’s mother, said participation has waned in recent years. She and her husband, Micky Utter, have four kids who are all racers. The family has been heavily involved in the sport for five years.

At Saturday’s race, the couple wore shirts with a slogan: “Red Neck Races.” It’s a good-natured dig at some of the people they encountered at the Salem, Ore., competition who arrived in fancy motorhomes with custom racks to hold their kids’ cars. “We put our cars in our horse trailer” and blared Gretchen Wilson’s 2005 Grammy winner ‘Red-Neck Woman’ on the stereo,” she laughed.

Soccer and baseball are now major competitors to Soap Box racing, and it isn’t for everyone, Janet Eagle said.

“It demands a lot of parental involvement. It’s not a drop-off sport,” she said.

Conrad Dean, 13, urged more kids to sign up. He’s raced in the Super Stock Car division, but Spokane doesn’t have it anymore because there aren’t enough participants, he said.

“We need more people. If we don’t get more, we can’t continue the races,” Dean said.