By: Ron Burt
I want to remind high school football fans I will be giving high school scores every Friday night on Facebook Live, on the “Ohio Sports Blitz” at 9:35PM and 10:40PM. If you’re a die-hard football fan I will cover 20 conferences. Locally this includes WBL, MAC, NWOAL, GMC, NWC, BVC and 14 more. I will also cover the weekly Ohio Top 10 and the National Top 10. The Friday night scoreboard last year averaged close to 2,000 listeners for each broadcast. I’m still deciding about putting it on TikTok. Just log onto Facebook and bookmark “Ohio Sports Blitz” and follow the page for any updates.
The 41st annual Eldora Kings Royal might have been the best in the history of the race. It was the largest crowd I’ve ever seen at the track. It was hard to look at the stands or the grassy hillside between turns one and two and find a place to sit. One of the World of Outlaw fan favorites, David Gravel was the race winner and was crowned King and took the $175.000.00 first place check. The second big winner was a fan that won the 50/50 and took home $82,791.00. Some people attend this race to play the 50/50. It’s hard to believe such a huge event doesn’t attract area TV, radio or newspaper sports reporters. David Gravel has now won the 3 most prestigious events in Sprint Car Racing, Kings Royal 2024, Knoxville Nationals 2019 and the National Open 2014 and 2017. The Top Five finishers at this year’s Kings Royal, David Gravel, Donny Schatz, Justin Peck, Logan Schuchart and Jacob Allen.
The “Knight Before” on Friday was another battle. You could hear the huge crowd chanting Rico, Rico as they watched Rico Abreu out-dual David Garvel. He picked up his 10th Eldora victory, 17th with the World of Outlaws and $25,000.00 for his work. Gravel had to settle for second and Logan Schuchart rounded out the podium.
On Thursday July 18th, David Gravel won the Eldora Joker’s Jackpot and netted himself $100,000.00. Donny Schatz was 2nd and Brad Sweet 3rd. Wednesday July 17th the Double Down Duels kicked off Kings Royal week and was run by the High Limit Racing Series. Group A was won by Logan Schuchart and Giovanni Scelzi won Group B.
Saturday, July 20th Oakshade Raceway had the Night of Wheels. 40 brand new donated bikes, scooters, etc. were given away at intermission to a bunch of happy kids and Toledo, Ohio’s Dan Wallace found this way back to victory lane for the first time since 2018 in the DIRTcar UMP Late Model feature event. Wallace jumped out to a nice lead at the start of the 25-lap main event over Rusty Smith and Carter Murday after starting on the pole. He continued to check out on the rest of the field until a caution flag flew with just four laps remaining which tightened the field back. Once the green flag dropped for the final laps, Wallace once again pulled away and was able to take the checkered flag. Colin Shipley got by Rusty Smith for 2nd in the final laps which moved him up to second in the points, just 26 behind the fourth-place finisher, Carter Murday. Jake Rendel ended up fifth. The Dominator Super Stocks ran two features because of a June 8th rain-out. Jake Rendel won the evenings A-main, and Jeff Foks Jr. won the make-up feature. Kolin Schilt took the checker in the Sportsman Class. Jeff Wells won the Sport Compact feature. Until next week, keep your wheels down. Ron out!
