Dakota Walls is just one of many, many Carroll County High School Freshman. The one thing that might set him apart is that Walls drives his own race 🏁 car.

Let that sink in for a moment and it becomes easy to jump to 1,000 different directions. Must be nice, how rich does someone have to be to buy their child a race car ? Way to spoil a child, couldn’t stop at a pony ?

Eddie Walls works for a living and the Carroll County High School graduate 🎓 is trying hard to raise a child in a very challenging environment. We weren’t very deep into our initial conversation when the logic involved in creating this opportunity for his teenage Son became clear.

See, Dakota doesn’t just drive the #11 car on the weekends. Dad set up the opportunity for his Son with the running of the business involving the car, including getting sponsors for his team.

That part of the process is what led Linda and I to the Franklin County Speedway last night. It was our second time this year that we carved out the time to take in a night at the track over in Calloway.

The very first time that I had a discussion with Dakota he was still in Middle School 🏫. Realizing that I was talking to someone that was the same age as the oldest of our nine grandchildren made me smile.

We were trying to search out ways through our Non-profit organization, OneofUs.Care, to see if we could possibly help someone in our Community persue a lifetime changing dream.

You hear the stories about how old Jeff Gordon or Jimmy Johnson were when they started their racing careers. Dale Junior was destined to drive while still in the delivery room.

Finding success at the next level is not foreign in our neck of the woods. Just across Lovers Leap is where the Wood Brothers operation started its journey and while the main part of the operation is no longer in Stuart, the museum is worth a visit.

Carroll County High School just recently graduated 🎓 a group of over achieving Student Athletes that are now headed off to College. Mike Montgomery made it the Show that is Major League Baseball.

Alyssa Ervin is just a few months away from lacing up her sneakers 👟 at Elon University. Nobody knows where her journey will end. Mason Crockett is set to play football at Virginia Tech and Addie Greene clearly has the “It Factor “. Let’s not forget about Trace Reavis on the Golf course. This list can go on and on with the thought process being if we have Youth that have the desire to chase a dream, we should be lining up to encourage them.

There is no guarantees in the process for anyone of us but more often than not, encouraging people comes at little to no cost. Does Dakota Walls have the ability to make it to the point where Jeff Gordon is doing commentary about him ? Not sure but its been a pleasure learning more about the Father – Son duo and getting the pleasure of watching our Logo zip around the oval track a couple of times has been an absolute blast.

For 30 of the scheduled 58 Laps Saturday night Walls was out there, bumper to bumper racing 🏎 like he knew what he was doing. After a collision while racing for fourth place damaged the car enough to make it impossible to finish the race so our night ended just after 10pm.

Racing 🏎 a Late Model Race car while in Middle School is not a every day occurrence. Sadly, there’s no after School club for drivers and its not a story big enough to make the Newspaper. The goal here is to help spread the word about a hard charging Freshman and a Father 👨 that loves him !

Here is Dakota Walls and our Volleyball 🏐 team in the photo 📷, shoot for the team !

When it was time to head out to Boone at the start of the weekend Vickey Ritchie wasn’t sure if we would have an opponent for the Basketball practice on Sunday or not.

Enter Brandi Cochran – Mitchell into the conversation and the next thing you know ole Jed was a Millionaire.

We went from wondering if we would have five players to having a Gymnasium full of folks, quality folks.

For those who have never been to one of the Sunday afternoon sessions, we have a group of people come over to compete against our Special Olympics Basketball 🏀 team. The reference to the Washington Generals comes from the Harlem Globetrotters, the Generals were the team that offered themselves up as the opposition.

We had some first-time players and some returning guests. The guest list of youngsters included Ashton and Andrew Primm , Lilly and Kinsley Goad, CC and Ben Mitchell.

Next up we had Papa (Blake) Goad and then a pair in the middle. Recent graduate 🎓 Lauren Alley and current CCHS Student Athlete Madison Coleman rounded out the playing roster.

It was fun to meet some new folks and I miss seeing Lauren Alley but I want to close with Madison Coleman. Miss Coleman is always, always smiling, everytime I see her. Not sure what’s up with that but I think its kinda Awesome and I would believe her Mother thinks so as well…

Lucas Cochran, Ladies and Gentlemen ! Great to meet him, the Goads and the Primms.

It takes a special person to give up part of their Sunday afternoon just to make a day better for others…

Fun notes 📝 – Kinsley Goad might have been the leading scorer and every now and then we saw flashes of our old #30.

Boys 👦 Soccer ⚽️ Coach Forrest Johnson will be beginning his latest Soccer Camp tomorrow !

  Forrest works as hard on his program as anyone we have on The Hill and for this we are grateful 🙏.

  If you have a youngin looking to check out the game of Soccer, here’s a great opportunity !!

Finally made it back from an incredibly long day where somewhere in the area of 400 miles were logged as it went Laurel Fork – Boone – Franklin County Speedway and finally back to Laurel Fork.

Getting to see young Dakota Walls zip around the race track was fun and there will be full story on that later today (Sunday ).

Meanwhile, there’s no cell service or internet to speak of over in Callaway so I wasn’t aware of an issue that had came up until a few minutes ago.

As we continue to try and find people in the Carroll County area that have positive stories to tell, we are going to learn more and more of the History in our area.

Over the past few years of covering Jabin Talley playing tennis 🎾 for Carroll County High School it seemed odd to me that the sport at our School didn’t have a clear path to its roots.

Being a Champion of the “lesser sports”, I talked about how we knew that Emma Leath was chasing down Sydney Nester, Alyssa Ervin was chasing down Erin Gibson and Ashlyn Newman was chasing down Adrienne Harris but very little was known about the history of the Tennis program.

I want to say Thank You Sir, to Wesley Herring, for two reasons. First, for letting me know about Ross Harvey which led to the name Franklin Jett.

Secondly, Mr. Herring referred to me as Mr. Carter, which means a great deal to me. The old line about if I had a nickle for everytime I have been called in a less than respectful manner I might could buy a tank of gasoline ⛽.

I don’t see it as a negative thing that someone reached out and shared information about our history. I would appreciate someone putting me in contact with both Ross Harvey and Franklin Jett so I can offer them the opportunity to reminis about their Glory Days. That is actually what I have been chasing over the past four years.

Last part of the equation, let’s take a look 👀 at what might have lead to someone bringing this up now versus earlier. The Baseball Alumni Game led me to finding 10 different former players that were willing to take pen 🖊 to paper 📃 and share their thoughts on what it meant to be a Cavalier.

This inturn quadrupled the amount of people in Carroll County that knew my site even existed. Love, Love, Love that fact and I’m also aware that anyone who goes backwards on the site will find things that they want to add to or correct. This too is Welcomed !

The idea 💡 behind my site, which I have been writing ✍ for going on twenty years now, is to create an escape for people. A diversion from the Election or the cost of the above mentioned Gasoline ⛽.

To show that I am willing to accept that when one is an one man band, I just finished writing ✍ a very personal piece for Brandi Cochran – Mitchell. Felt great about the effort, from top to bottom, until I realized that Brandi was one of five children, not one of two…..

Everything I post is designed to be consumed in 2 minutes or less and my Brain 🧠 tells me that my time is up.

Later today I will write ✍ about young Dakota Walls, help Vickey Ritchie with the Special Olympics and hopefully listen to Brother Stephen Puckett 🙏 preach.

In the meantime, please let Ross Harvey and Franklin Jett both know that they have an open invitation to tell their stories !