Once in a Lifetime—Every Year

I have always had a love for vintage cars – for as long as I can remember. My dad used to take me to car shows growing up, and I was blown away when he could point at a car and go “That’s a 1957 Bel-Air” or “that’s a 1933 Coronet”. Looking back, he could have been lying about every car, but I didn’t know it at the time, so it remained an impressive experience. That love for the old iron never died regardless of the fact that we never had the means to actually own a piece of history. Every time something cool would drive by – I would lust at the possibility of it.

I met my wife early in our college lives, and that led to marriage before graduation from The Ohio State University. Part of our adventure together after college included a move from Ohio to Virginia Beach, Virginia in 2015. We remained connected to many close friends, both before and after our move, and one of those people was Christian Lauber. Christian and I had been long time friends, and I had gotten to know his family over the years as well. We went back to Ohio to visit with friends and family in 2016, and Christian came over with a manilla folder – which to any friendly hangout is an odd opener.

I will never forget the way he bought the idea of the Great Race up to me – “Hey, you want to go on a once in a lifetime trip with old cars”? Of course- easiest answer I could ever give. He presented the opportunity to navigate in the 1968 Mustang with his grandpa in the back seat, and his dad Pat Lauber and step-uncle Kelly Jones in a partner car.

We set forth for our first journey starting in Jacksonville, FL. One of my favorite GR stories to date came from when we were preparing the car in the parking garage at the hotel, and famed Great Racer Gary Martin told Christian, “You see those 2 girls over there [pointing to Olivia and Genna Gentry] – they are gonna school you in this race”. Man, was he ever right! That year’s race was missed turn after missed turn and terrible finishes each day. But, as the Great Race does, both of our teams were hooked after the first ace. Christian and I finished and got destroyed by a high majority of the field, but we couldn’t have had a better time. When the opportunity came up to do this drug again, we jumped at the chance and began the real journey of “how do I get better?”

We began knocking down every door of Experts and Grand Champions until we found any that would give us advice – which was not too hard. We were even lucky enough to have a couple of virtual training sessions with the legendary Barry Jason and his lovely wife Irene. They taught us more than anyone else had, and we had never even met them in person. Even with the best teachers in the game, we still didn’t have it quite right. That’s where fellow Mustang-Racers Brad and Erin Kaplan stepped up and corrected our course! As we began to figure this thing out, improving on our scores each year, I started to fall in love with teaching other racers and seeing their joy as they improved. While our main mission each year was to beat our partner car, now captained by Pat Lauber and Ron Smith, we still enjoyed moving up the rankings ourselves.

The more we taught other racers, the more requests we got to teach. This led to multiple iterations of my “Chart Creation Tool” that so many racers now use, and many in-person sessions with other racers. Some of my favorite “students” included each of the X-Cup teams I got the privilege of working with. Their successes in the car and excitement to return each year was fantastic.

With those particular teachings, I got mixed up with Mallory Fruin, and we decided to start hosting “X-Cup only” training sessions that were meant to focus just on the students and the struggles – and successes – they could look forward to. We started with the most basic of how-to’s and worked our way up to how to mount the speedo. The class got rave reviews, and the requests kept flowing in from other racers for us to find a way to start a racer-led initiative to run X-Cup. A few short months later, Mallory Fruin, Alishia Iddings, and I were able to officially launch X-Cup Legacy.

We are loving the way this program has gone so far, and the support we have received from the entire field of racers. We have assembled a full board of very race-involved, successful racers, from Grand Champions [Jeff Fredette], Expert Navigators [Mallory Fruin, Tom Roberts], Expert Drivers [Jeff Hermanson], Volunteers [Alishia Iddings, Scott Culp and Jenny Culp], to fundraising masters [Sarah Stahl, Jeff Hermanson]. We hope you are excited to help support these students and provide them the same opportunities that were provided to me. We have seen them turn into success stories in their personal lives and careers. And we look forward to all of their future success stories!

Christian and I look forward to hanging out with everyone in 2026! Pat Lauber and his new partner, long-time Great Racer Rob Roemer, will make it the hardest competition that we have seen!