BRODHEAD, Wis. — The first VKA event at SRR was held in 2006. It took a couple of years for us, along with Bill McCornack and George Sellon to convince Marshall that Sugar River Raceway was a perfect fit for one of these events that were popping up around the country. When he finally agreed, we were off and running. An annual meeting in Feb or March would get us started for the year’s event. 

The Brodhead Historics grew in attendance every year and became Marshall’s favorite weekend of the karting season. We worked as a team to bring new ideas and to perfect the order of things until the event almost ran on “auto pilot”. We have enjoyed welcoming old and new friends over the registration table and during the tech process. The kart shows have also grown as we stretched all the way down both sides of the home straight. It centered on our beer, wine & cheese tasting, creating a unique social atmosphere, as Bill hosted the raffle and games.  

We are very proud of the number of beautiful and unique karts that have been on display here and we want to thank all the karters who have been in attendance. You are why we enjoyed doing this so much. It has been our pleasure to share the rich history of this track and the Blackhawk karts that were built here. However, Mike and I have decided to step down. Bill is still handling the VKA end of it and the Searles family have things in hand.

Our family is looking forward to this year’s event. We have had two grandsons participating in the Jr.class, beginning with Skyler in the early years, to Jadon who is in his last year of that class. Three generations of our family have called

Sugar River Raceway our home track. Mike and Rose have spent several years with both of their boys in the modern series as well.

We have had many a Blackhawk kart in and out of our family garages. We are still working on Poison Arrow #1, but it is taking a back seat to getting a

Poison Arrow ready for Jadon. Not sure we can get him out of that Fox, but Grandpa’s working on it.  Many of you know, granddaughter, Haley, and Jackson were married last fall (so, actually you could say Rylie and Garrett are our fourth generation) and are now building their new business,

JRS Customs (JRS-Customs.com). He still loves working on karts when time allows and Haley will be at the event taking pictures again.

This will be the last series of emails we send. There are a lot of memorable photos in 18 years to share.  As we’ve said before, we lost a lot of email addresses in the transition, so for your friends, who we may have lost, please share this post.

Information about the event can be found on the SRR website as well as the VKA website.

We have been fortunate to receive so much historic information from the Fairman family, we will be posting pieces of it periodically on VKA facebook so we can continue to share with the karting family.

We hope you will all continue to support this great event.

The pictures that follow are some of our favorite memories over the years. We hope you enjoy them and we will see you in the pits in July!!!!

Mike and Joann Morrall