Rains Ravage Ravenna. Crew Controls the Chaos.
Rains Ravage Ravenna. Crew Controls the Chaos.
Certain pulls and specific tracks have become famous for certain aspects and dependable patterns at their events each year. Be it good, bad, or neutral these are elements fans and pullers alike have come to accept and even expect when they roll into a venue. Take the Louisville Left Hook for example. It’s an added quirk that all are aware of. Another trend that has become common, is the wild regularity of weather patterns over an entire 365 day period. I have read the thread more than once, “It’s Tomah, of course it rained,” as those final weekends in June are becoming synonymous with precipitation in Monroe County, Wisconsin. Unfortunately, in my two years working summers with the Outlaw Truck and Tractor Pulling Association, I have learned we have our own iteration of Tomah. Ladies and gentlemen I present to you Ravenna, Nebraska.
Each of the past four years there has been rain that severely impacted the outcome of the show, be it a complete rain out of the twin session event, or at least a single wash for a Friday or Saturday night session. As I arrived on Thursday night, attempting to be a day early and a dollar ahead, it was as if Mother Nature decided to impart a cruel welcoming gift. What was supposed to have been a fifteen minute pop up shower, turned into a developed system that, evidently, anchored squarely on the pulling track. Three hours of a steady drop and deluge soaked the central Nebraska dirt.
There is a certain thing I have learned about the blue collar, knuckle busting crowd in America. The quickest way to assure a thing will come to be, is to tell these tried and true folks that something CAN’T be done. Heretofore this article has seemed to be a drizzly recounting of the sad side effects of the weather, when in all actuality it is truly a testament to the iron will of mid-America.
The sport of pulling is always quick to honor what the fans see. Millions of videos and photos flood social media displaying every last imaginable angle of the vehicles. Behind the scenes interviews are given to drivers left and right portraying them as the rock stars they are. Announcers get hailed as iconic voices in the sport. Sled operators are critiqued as umpires and officials. However, the one group that remains silent in the shadows, is the track preparation crew. Even on the most perfect of weather days, these fine folks have a four hour job ahead of them to prepare an ideal pulling surface.
Snap back to Ravenna, Nebraska. There is not a prep crew in America that would have been thought less of to simply call off the pull, and maybe even the whole weekend show, at 9:00 AM Friday morning. We couldn’t relay that message, however, because by 9:00, this crew had already begun the process of restoring the surface hours ago. For two straight days I watched this unrelenting group of Outlaw employees, and Ravenna volunteers do everything imaginable to make a show happen. And while, ultimately, a pull time decision was made on Friday night that the track would be too unreliable for sleds and competitors (crew still working to the bone while the officials made this decision), Saturday night yielded us one of the greatest power tracks I have ever seen.
Mother Nature woke up with the fury of a woman scorned on Saturday morning, evidently taking it personally that Kevin Bauer, Ryan Boysen, and crew had come so close to undoing her efforts on Friday, and decided to present us with another morning thunderstorm. But this time our side was ready with reinforcements. Loaders built mountains of mud (perhaps the new highest peaks in the flat state of Nebraska) as they searched for a firm surface. Graders built ditches to drain the standing water. Trucks hauled in lime and organic material. And as for the disc operator, I think he may have been refueling during prep, so relentless was his approach.
By noon it was apparent the pull was likely. By three it was certain. By six, we were looking at the best track Ravenna has had in a long while. The pull debuted the 2025 Outlaw points season. We saw repeat winners from last year. We saw first time victors. We saw a pull off! We saw trucks searching for the lowest gear they could imagine on a track that was sorting the tough from the tougher. We saw a perfect track. We saw a pull. And it was all thanks to the crew who never gets thanked enough. We tip our caps to you track preparation officials, the nation over. You pulled off a miracle in Nebraska!
Pullin’ is Fun
Green Flags and Tight Chains
Mike Eitel
Engagement Specialist
Beer Money Pulling Team
