An overlooked casualty in NASCAR’s exit from Kentucky Speedway? High school sports
For years, anytime a NASCAR race was held at Kentucky Speedway, there was at least one locally prominent sports figure you could count on seeing in Sparta.
During his iconic boys’ high school basketball coaching career at Scott County, Billy Hicks marshaled his program’s supporters to work concession stands at Kentucky Speedway events to raise money for the school’s hoops team.
“Scott County’s athletics program, there for years, we lived off of that,” Hicks says. “People just look at the racing being gone, but, gosh, it brings in a lot of money. We’d raise anywhere from five to 10 thousand dollars off a weekend.”
When NASCAR and Speedway Motorsports LLC, the owner of Kentucky Speedway, announced last month that there would not be NASCAR national touring series races at the Gallatin County track in 2021, it was an obvious blow to motorsports fans in the commonwealth.
An overlooked casualty in the decision will be local high school sports programs which were reliant on funds raised at NASCAR events at Kentucky Speedway to financially support their teams.
Gallatin County Judge-Executive Jon Ryan Morris says the loss of the NASCAR Cup Series Quaker State 400 and other races in Sparta “will have an impact through all walks of our charities. Our athletic (boosters) that work there for the high school to make money for Christmas basketball trips and uniforms are really going to feel it.
“I’d say, total, it would probably be in the tens to hundreds of thousands of (fundraising) dollars lost just based on that one race.”
Jon Jones, the principal at Gallatin County High School, says that money raised from working races at Kentucky Speedway has allowed the school to buy new uniforms for each of its sports teams on four-year cycles.
“We had all our athletic departments go out there and work,” Jones says. “We typically had 50 to 75 people out there working a race. All that money (raised) pretty much goes into our uniform accounts.”
Working races at Kentucky Speedway, Jones says, was yielding around $20,000 a year for Gallatin County athletics, middle school through high school.
“Other schools, Owen County does as much out there as we do,” Jones says.
Devin Duvall, the boys’ basketball coach at Owen County, says “myself, my staff and parent volunteers have worked suite security at the Speedway, so we are looking at about a $3,000 to $4,000 a year loss just for boys’ basketball.”
Owen County’s football, girls’ basketball, softball and girls’ golf programs will also be “greatly impacted,” Duvall says.
Overall, Duvall estimates that Owen County athletics will be out “$15,000 to $20,000” annually via the departure of NASCAR from Kentucky Speedway.
“It’s a big hit,” Duvall says.
NASCAR had been running trucks series races at Kentucky Speedway since 2000, Xfinity Series races since 2001 and Cup Series events since 2011.
This year’s NASCAR racing at Kentucky Speedway was held without fans in the stands, giving local schools a preview of life without the money usually raised there.
Moving forward, there is no obvious, immediate way for the schools near Kentucky Speedway to replace the athletics funding they have lost.
Charitable gaming, which supports high school sports in some parts of the commonwealth, is likely not viable due to the proximity of Belterra Casino Resort across the Ohio River from Gallatin County in Indiana.
“From our school, you can almost see Belterra from out my window,” says Jones, the Gallatin County principal. “Bingo doesn’t go too (well) when you’ve got legalized gambling five minutes from where you are at.”
Long term, Jones says he expects Gallatin County High School supporters to seek chances to work concessions at Cincinnati Reds and/or Cincinnati Bengals games as a means to try to replace the fundraising capacity lost at Kentucky Speedway.
In the short term, with large gatherings such as sports crowds either prohibited or greatly reduced by the effort to contain the coronavirus, “nobody’s got fans in the stands, so nobody has a need for concessions (workers),” Jones says.
Duvall, the Owen County hoops coach, says he holds out some hope that Kentucky Speedway, even if no longer a NASCAR track, might be able to attract mass-spectator events that would still provide fundraising opportunities.
“I got an email from (a Kentucky Speedway representative). I don’t think they are anticipating NASCAR coming back anytime soon,” Duvall says. “Maybe they will be able to supplement with other races.”
Hicks, who retired as Scott County coach after the 2018-19 season, says that funds raised at Kentucky Speedway and from working other events such as the Kentucky Derby and University of Kentucky football games “paid for everything we did. Uniforms, travel, shoes. Schools just couldn’t make it work without that.”
With NASCAR racing at Kentucky Speedway removed from the high school sports fundraising equation, Hicks is glad to no longer be required to finance a high-level, high school hoops operation.
“Especially with (COVID-19 limitations) on crowd sizes, I don’t know how schools are going to fundraise,” Hicks says. “The parents (of players) are going to have to pick up more of the load. And the taxpayers. It’s gonna come down to, ‘How bad does a community want good high school sports?’”
