Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
CLOVIS — The Clovis Rotary Club has been hosting the city’s soap box derby for so long, its first racers could now have racers of their own.
“Or our first champion is now 30; we could look at it that way,” race organizer Larry Erwin said.
This weekend marks the 18th running of the Clovis Soap Box Derby, which serves as a qualifier for the national Soap Box Derby. That will be July 20 in Akron, Ohio, with practice rounds and family activities for all of the competitors in the preceding days.
Saturday’s competition begins at 9 a.m., and Erwin expects there will be a champion some time between 2:30 p.m. and 3 p.m. if the weather cooperates. It should, as weather.com predicts a high of 90 with just a 10 percent chance of precipitation.
The race is open to kids between the ages of 9 and 18 as of July 1, but kids on the older side outgrow the competition, either mentally or physically since the racer plus the fiberglass kit car must weigh 235 pounds. The racers signed up so far are in the 9-to-14 range.
Racers will have a weigh-in noon Friday, with practice runs until about 4 or 5 p.m., Erwin said.
“It looks like we’ve got about 18 racers,” Erwin said. “We’re down two from last year. We may have that many at race time.”
The race has changed little since Erwin first picked up the idea after seeing a derby in Rio Rancho. The stretch of Sycamore Street that stretches north to Yucca Middle School and south to Dickenson Field is closed to accomodate the racers, who compete in an hours-long double-elimination bracket.
Sycamore Street by itself has not much of a grade, so organizers help the kids get momentum by adding a structure that serves as both an angled ramp and the race starting block.
The racers face each other twice, alternating the lanes each time, and the lowest total time wins that round. Around three dozen of those races, and somebody’s ticket will be punched to Akron.