2020 Hub City Nationals Race Report

Filed under General on August 12, 2020 | Comment(s)

If there was ever a city that could make you feel like you were in a scene in the movie Rad, Aberdeen South Dakota is the place. Local officials have stated that the Hub City Nationals were the largest event ever held in the town of 28,000. All we were missing was parade of factory riders going through main Street.

There are a couple of “Cru” like racers that call the Aberdeen area home. Jordan Dahme is the first that comes to mind as he became known on the national circuit a few years back in the A Pro class. These days he’s winning 31-35 Cruiser on his home turf and quickly rising up the 26-35 Expert NAG rankings. Next up is Liberty Racing’s Trevor Rystrom who not only competes in the ultra-stacked 17-20 expert and cruiser classes but also recently committed to the South Dakota Army National Guard. Thank you in advance for your service Mr. Rystrom. Another local who is just returning from 10 months of active duty is Brandon Lout, who also represents Liberty Racing. Thanks go out to all the locals who made us feel right at home.

Before we get into the racing action we must talk about the weather. We were quite lucky to not have to deal with rain (it did sprinkle on the balance bike racers for about 5 minutes on Saturday morning). The real story was the wind. Racers made a mad dash to get whatever goggles they could find to combat what mother nature blew our way.

A few of our top National contenders made the trek to the plains including Box’s Jemma Tollefson, Impact’s Preslie Gould, BMX Sharks’ Sage Gazan and Full Tilt’s Mckenzie Gayheart. All of these young ladies have their eyes on that National #1 Amateur girl title and their racing reflected that. “Lil JT” Tollefson never lost a lap throughout the weekend’s event despite some fierce competition from SSquared’s Kaylee Lovins and “Maddiecat” Madison Calhoun in the 8 Girls class. Preslie Gould has been on a rampage all season long but ran into LDC’s Lily Ashley and Fult Tilt’s Callie Voight. Lily would get the 10 Expert Girls win on Sunday while Voight grabbed wins on the first two days of competition. That leaves “Skittles” Mckenzie Gayheart who also never lost a lap on the weekend. Her main comp came from her team mate Stephani Morin who picked up the second each day.

On the boys side of things, the top five ranked amateurs were all in attendance. These riders are Full Tilt’s Sean Day, BMX Sharks’ Cedric Cade, Profile Racing’s Rowdy Holzer, and Full tilt superstars Cole Frederick and Eli Staton. Sean Day finishd his 2019 season as the number two ranked amateur in the nation and is looking to become the second rider ever to bring an Amateur title back to his home state of Washington. El Suave could definitely could do just that come Tulsa time in November. If you haven’t heard of the epic battles this season between Cedric Cade and Ronnie Kim you must have been living under a rock. Friday was all Kim as the BMX Shark wasn’t on the motos sheets but showed up Saturday Morning to do battle with the Assassin. In Saturday’s main event Kim was able to hold off the kid from Vegas and keep him on the outside of the entire track. On Sunday it was much of the same but Cade went for a move in the second turn that simply wasn’t there. This resulted in both racers hitting the ground and Cade going over the turn. Driven Cycling Academy’s Douglas Schmeichel was in the right place at the right time and would take the 14X win back to Idaho. Profile’s Holzer had a near perfect weekend with triples on both Saturday and Sunday but missed the class main on Friday after sliding out in the final turn in the semi all by himself. He never lost a lap after meeting the South Dakota soiltac. Both Frederick and Staton won their classes all three days (12 and 10X respectively). This was especially impressive as this was Staton’s first weekend racing as a 10X. Team managers hopefully were keeping an eye on the 12 Cruiser &Expert classes as an unsponsored Kaleb Mccain was seen in second behind the World Champion Frederick. McCain also won the 12 Cruiser class two out of the three days of racing.

We have always wanted to come to Aberdeen with the national circuit and this was the year. The man behind that desire is Track operator Kyle Oswald. He has put in over 22 years of work into building tracks for the locals to enjoy and he was the guiding light that allowed us to hold our first ever national event in the Dakotas. Hats off to you and your crew. When the semi rolled out of the track it looked as if we had never been there. It was pretty spotless and we’ve come to expect that out of Aberdeen Hub Area BMX, a true gem in the middle of nowhere.