Eddie and Dakota Walls is a story about a Father who Loves his Son that happens to involve a Late Model Race 🏁 Car 🚗.

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 !