Geoff Cowles/Mount Vernon News
Chase Zolman, pictured posing on his ATV, credits his family for his success. Zolman is currently ranked ninth in the ATV EDT National Championship Series.
Nobody gets there on their own. Zolman is surrounded by a loving family, who have invested financially and in every, other way in his success. They have also taught him to pay it forward.
Every step of the way, Zolman’s family has been there to help. Since before he won his first trophy in 2004, his father, Denny Zolman, has been a guiding hand.
“He got me into racing and my grandparents have helped out a great deal,” the younger Zolman said.
Chase Zolman’s grandparents purchased a pair of quad ATVs and a big trailer to haul them to racing venues around the country. They, along with his mother, Misty Zolman, have been his biggest cheerleaders.
“He had a choice,” explained his Denny Zolman. “He was going to do this or play baseball, because that is what he was playing at the time.”
Even though his father is too nervous to watch his son racing, the prospect of danger doesn’t seem to phase the younger Zolman, who is racing while nursing a broken wrist, which he hurt snowboarding in the offseason. He hasn’t broken any bones in quad racing, but he has gotten banged up a few times.
“Quad racing is about the arenaline and being by yourself,” Zolman said. “You don’t have to worry about anything else. It’s just you and yourself and all the mistakes you make come back on you. Everything’s on you.”
Along with his grandparents, Mid-Ohio Powersports, where Zolman works, is also sponsoring him. The logos of sponsors that cover the outside of his quad racers are a measure of the success he has enjoyed, as wins on the track.
They’re all part of Zolman’s racing family, which stretches around the country. Some of that racing family includes the racers Zolman goes head-to-head with on the track. Many of whom, are several years older than Zolman. It also includes the people, who build engines for his quads, along with younger racers and young fans, asking for an autograph.
“Some of the best friends around are at the track,” said Denny Zolman.
Those friendships are the most dependable thing in a sport where prize money comes and goes and sponsor money is never a sure bet.
“Chase has good weekends and he has bad weekends,” said Denny Zolman. “He’ll have a weekend, where he’ll make a thousand. Then, he’ll have a weekend, where he’ll make two, three or four hundred. Then, he’ll have a weekend where he’ll come home and have nothing.”
In a sport, where something as simple as a broken shock absorber can cost on the high side of a couple of thousand dollars to replace and tires are a hundred dollars apiece, the business side of racing can come up to bite a struggling racer in a hurry.
That’s what makes something Zolman did for young racers all the more special. After a recent win in the NE/EDT series at Muskingum County Speedway in the ProAm Spec Tire Class, Zolman used some of his prize money to help out the next generation of riders by sponsoring the 200-400 cc class race, so there would be 50 dollars in prize money to race for and not just a trophy.
The winner of that race was 13-year-old Cody Houghton, who is just starting out in his racing career. Zolman remembers the times when Cody’s father loaned a guiding hand, when he was very young.
“When I was growing up, and I wasn’t pro yet,” Zolman said. “I was in the 250 cc class and Michael Houghton, a pro rider from New York, always went out of his way to come up and talk to me, before I ended up going pro. Michael moved down to North Carolina, so he could ride more and start up his own business. Now, his son Cody is in the 200-400 cc class.”
It was such a good idea, that Zolman is sponsoring one of Cody Houghton’s upcoming races in Michigan, putting up another 50 dollars in prize money.
Perhaps the good turn Zolman did is coming back to him, because he won an NE/EDT race in Salem, Ohio last weekend.
“It was a kind thing to do,” Misty Zolman said. “Denny taught Chase about racing and I taught him to be kind.”
