Letter from Jesse Strege, USCC Race Director

Here at the USCC we are excited to be moving forward as well as moving on into the 2011-2012 season. Of course, the passing of USCC President Pat Mach last season is still on everyone's minds, and we ask ourselves every day, "What would Pat do?" Pat did great things for cross-country snowmobile racing and left big shoes to fill. Fortunately for us, he assembled a great group of people to help run the USCC, and we're happy to say that nearly everyone will be back for the coming season so expect the events to be just like they've been in the past.

First off, we're sorry communication has been so sparse leading into the season. Like many of you, I'm a farmer and we've been running non-stop for the past couple months with harvest and I've been putting off a lot of the things I've been needed to do. I knew it would catch up to me and it has, big time!

Second, it might be confusing to some that I am the Race Director for ISOC as well as USCC. In my role with ISOC I am simply there to observe and enforce the rules. With USCC I have more of an overall managerial position, so I am involved in event coordination as well as being the race director. My role with USCC is much more involved and should there be any event scheduling conflicts I will be at the USCC event, not the ISOC event.

Next, as far as rules we've tried to keep everything the same to make it simple for people, but we need to clarify a couple things. There are new rules for Junior classes in snocross regarding the Sno Pro 500 and throttle stops and things like that. These do not apply to USCC and we will continue to use the spec gears for the Junior 10-13 class. There are places on the course where the kids will need the power of the sled and the gears will allow them to have full power while keeping speeds down.

During the last week there were some schedule changes. Here's the deal: two years ago we started talks with Mark Warnert about bringing a race to Quadna, last year it was a backup venue, this year we're going to race there. We decided to take Munising off the schedule and replace it with Quadna for a number of different reasons, the primary one being Munising was so far away from the rest of the races on the USCC schedule. Quadna has a lot of snowmobile racing history and has hosted both cross-country and snocross races, so it should be a great event.

Right now there is a TBA on the schedule where Walker used to be. We have a list of seven venues to replace Walker. Walker is still an option for us, but because of a conflict with the land we can (and can't) use it would have to be a pure lake race and we feel that is not the best option for a USCC-style event. The venues at the top of our TBA list will make for better racing than the lake race option at Walker and will be the same caliber of racing USCC competitors are used to. Hopefully we can make it back to Walker in the future because the town was great to us last year.

Finally, if anyone has anyone has any questions regarding the coming season please feel free to call (218-843-5999) or e-mail me: jdstrege@wiktel.com. If I don't get back to you someone else will.