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The Making of Team 222 by Jim “Krawler” Smith
It was an awesome competition and we made a bunch of friends that day. Neither of us ever thought that most of them would continue to become better friends over the next 4 years and bring tough competition to each and every event. We thank you all for making this series such a great time.
4 years later, a ton of upgrades to the Jeep and memories of successful and destructive strategies, we are sitting as 4 time RCRocs Class 2 champs. “Rock On Team 222” 2011 RCrocs Club Competition
Competition Rules dictated that each Club was required to run 3 of their 4 vehicles through four courses and all 4 vehicles on a fifth course selected by RCrocs Club Comp officials. Strategy came into play in deciding which vehicle should sit out which course with the twist that a vehicle could only sit out once. If a vehicle already sat out, and then broke, that would count as a no show and be a huge penalty. Each vehicle was scored individually while on course and then, to keep the scores close, the scores were averaged to determine the overall club score for that course. At the end of the day, the top 5 teams would compete in a kill the cone shootout.
The courses turned out to be extremely challenging and fun with the competitors determined to complete every cone gate. This over-zealous nature benefited some teams but it also resulted in 18 flops and rollovers. Fortunately there were no physical injuries, vehicular body damage (aside from the XJ Cherokees,) was minimal and no one ended up with a disabled rig. That showed the experience and preparation of all involved clubs. Kudos to everyone.
When all 5 courses were finished, the judges tallied the scores. Team BMJA, with Zach Vaughn and Jay Hopko were in 2nd place with a score of 5.9 behind Team EC4x4′s score of 2.5. Team DNC, consisting of Brian Moyer, David Dietz, Eric Neustadter and Jim Smith were in 5th place, only .4 points behind the 3rd place team from the Maryland Creepers. This lead into one of the most exciting Kill the Cone shootouts to date. Being the 5th place team, DNC would go first. Jim Smith would spot for Eric Neustadter in his sick Truggy. They would get 33 of the 37 cones. With the 1st and 3rd place teams both rolling, and the 4th place team getting only 25 cones, Jay Hopko would power Team BMJA to first place overall by killing 37 cones and Team DNC would jump all the way to 2nd place. We couldn’t have asked for a better ending to an already awesome day |
We both decided it would be a good idea to learn the rules and see what this type of competition was all about, by judging at a WeRock event at RC. This was a very useful tool and educational experience. There were times when we couldn’t figure out why they were doing what they were, but then we quickly saw the benefits of their strategies. We also saw attempts that failed and learned from that as well. The event gave us ideas on what we wanted to accomplish as competitors.
We went into the first practice session with high hopes of kicking ass, but we were knocked off our mountain with a broken OBA belt and snapped driveshaft. This made us sit back and really think about what is needed to do well in this event. We had to do the opposite of our normal trail riding. Instead of trying to make the most difficult path with no assistance, we needed to pick the easiest way and stack rocks if needed.
We carried this information into the one and only event for the 2007 year. I think there were 15 competitors in Class 2 that year and all seemed to be a good bunch of guys. It was a very cold day with snow still on the ground, which made the courses very interesting. Each time we hit the course, we learned something else about our abilities and the Jeeps potential. We ended up going into the shootout with a large enough lead that we didn’t have to run it, but sitting it out was not in our nature. We proceeded to hit the drop off that claimed 3 out of 5 vehicles in front of us and completed it like we have done it many times before. My wife even commented that someone behind her initially said, “why are they going that way, didn’t they see what happened to the other vehicles”, but they quickly followed up with, “well I guess that is why they are in first place”!!!!
The 3rd annual RCrocs Club competition took place on April 9th at our favorite east coast place, Rausch Creek offroad park. The event had 11 different clubs sign up for the event but a last minute mishap with a transmission narrowed the field down to 10 teams. Each club could field a team of 3 vehicles that meet RCrocs Class 2 rules and 1 vehicle that meets RCrocs Class 3/4 rules. Setup, registration and tech inspection began the day before on a cold, wet and windy friday. The bleak weather didn’t detour the competition and the next day the competitors were greeted with an overcast but dry day to give it their all.
