Been meaning to post this for a while but just getting around to it now. Never saw anyone else in the rally scene mention this so either most rally people in the US don't go to Supercross events or they just didn't think it was a big deal.
When you are involved in a sport that generally attracts a few dozen to a few hundred spectators over the course of a weekend event and there are constant hand-wringing sessions over what can be done to improve the visibility of the sport and get more people at least AWARE of it so there is some potential for new blood to be brought it, getting the sport in front of the eyes of tens of thousands of people in a short period of time is a huge deal.
The setup was pretty simple. You hop in one of the four seats, the Toyota rep helps you put on a set of VR goggles and off you go with Ryan, racing down some dirt roads, keeping up with dirt bike rider racing the same terrain. Using VR you can look around the interior of Ryan's Rav4 seeing the cage, gaze out the window at the dirt biker, look across at Ryan, examine all the buttons on the dash...it was a REALLY cool experience.
In combination with Ryan Millen and his stage rally Rav4 and Toyota, what you see photos of here went traveling around to the 17 some odd Supercross events in the first half of '16. With total attendance for Supercross events pushing over 3/4 of a million individuals and a constant stream of people throwing on the VR goggles and riding along with Ryan Millen in the Rav4 down some dirt roads in California, it would have done a Stage Rally organization a great deal of good if it could have partnered with Ryan and/or Toyota to put some kind of "For more info about Stage Rally, go here: XXXX" or "If you want to get into racing cars in the dirt like Ryan and his Rav4 see this: XXXX", etc. At the very least it could have gotten a lot of eyeballs on the sport and let them know that the sport is out there.
For any rally organizer looking at this...Supercross does have one more event in '16...the season finale at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas in mid October...The opportunity to pull some new eyeballs and competitors/fans into the sport still exists...somebody get on it....
Modified to take on the Peking to Paris rally for pre 1975 cars. This 240Z was rotisserie restored before being modified to handle offroad roads. Not some garage queen, this was put on a boat and off to China for a 10,000 mile race that combines TSD and Special Stage style racing with a reported 50/50 mix of offroad/onroad terrain.
The host in the video is a bit of a goober but if you can make it past him, the owner/driver of the vehicle seems cool and down to earth and knowledgable about the history of offroad 240Zs which includes Baja and the East African Safari. The R&T article and the team's Facebook page are linked to below. They are currently in the middle of their race passing into Kazan, Russia yesterday and were busy cleaning off the Mongolian dirt. You can see their progress, trials and tribulations in their posts...amazing that quality internet access seems to be almost EVERYWHERE now...
Abdel Abdulla came into the Italian Baja in 2nd place overall for the year in the T2 class of the FIA Cross-Country Rally standings and is holding that place through the first two days of the three day event.
Currently having finished Stage 3 of the race, Abdulla is in second in T2 (production vehicles) about 2 and 1/2 minutes behind Seaidan and his LandCrusier who Abdullah is chasing for the '16 championship.
Tomorrow will present two more chances to catch Seaidan, each another 74 kilometers in length along what is a gravelly and water crossing filled course. Abdulla sits 21st overall out of 45 entrants and is the second placing Nissan so far. No Nissans have DNF'd to date and other sit as follows:
9th--Oliveira, Looks like a diesel Pathfinder...but unsure of real engine...Running in T1 class
21st--Abdulla, Patrol Y62
27th--Lechowicz, Navara (Frontier) D40
30th--Rossi, Pathfinder LR50
31st--Crozzolo, Navara (Frontier)
32nd--Toro, Patrol
33rd--Piec, Navara (Frontier) D40
38th--Traglio, Patrol
NORRA (National Off-Road Racing Association) has sent out invitations to prior racers and announced a number of changes to vehicle classes amongst other changes. Some of the racer beneficial changes include a payment plan starting this month so you can stretch the cost out over a long period of time. One of the class changes includes the elimination of a "rally" class and now includes three Rally-Raid classes (I would imagine "Rally-Raid Production" would cover most stage rally vehicles) and divides vehicles into a number of categories based on age and eliminates an "overall" winner (though adds an "overall" winner for each age category).
I don't know (OK, I'm pretty sure I won't) if I will return to this race in '16 but it was such a great/horrible/wonderful experience for me as a racer I can't help but recommend it to any rally/offroad racer out there. Nowhere else in North America will you have a chance to race some 1000 miles in a single rally event. Kudos to NORRA to continuing to make changes that benefit racers and not remaining static. NORRA 2016 Announcement
First step was actually obtaining a trailer. That was done recently. Now on to sprucing it up and making it more user friendly.
When I got it the four tires on the trailer, 225/75d15s, were all in very good condition. No real wear of any significant kind. But given the heavy weight of my race truck on the trailer, frequent poor road conditions, long travel distances, etc. I wanted a couple spares. So a couple brand new mounted spares we now have. As long as I'm not heading back to Baja, two spares should cut it one would think.
Then on to how to get the truck ON the trailer. The prior owner had been using wooden planks to get his smallish car on the trailer and that worked just fine. I wanted something a bit heavier duty while being light as well. So it was aluminum ramps that were acquired. With that the trailer is ready to go to its first event just one week away.
The Martelli Bros. produced Mint 400 race has now become an annual TV production on NBC. Its not quite as good (OK, not nearly as good) as watching the event live but it sure beats bass fishing or Bar Rescue reruns.
This year the event which was broadcast on Sunday 7/12 for a total of two action packed hours grabbed a 0.5 rating. So approximately 0.5% of all the 115.6 million TV households in the country were tuned into the race--though this 115.6 number is an old one from the '13-'14 TV season, the number of TV households in the US likely went up between '13-'14 and '14-'15 so this figure is underestimated if anything.
Based on this year old estimate of US TV households, there were some 578,000 TV owning households tuned into the event. Figuring 1.1 viewers per household that would put some 636,000 pairs of eyeballs on the 2015 Mint 400.
For comparison, the TV show that came on following the Mint was a broadcast regarding Pastrana's Nitro Circus and grabbed a 0.6 rating. At the same time over on Fox you had the women's US Open golf tournament which had a 0.7 rating
Of note is that last year's Mint 400 race had a 0.4 rating meaning that '15's ratings were a 25% increase. Hard to attribute ratings increases in such a small sample size to much but at least it is moving in the right direction.
Available digitally or at your local Barnes & Noble its good to see stage rally get coverage in a quality magazine here in the US. With the explosion of Dual Sport riding and motorcycles here in the US over the past few years this is great coverage for NASA's Rally Moto program. Besides the cover there are a number of pages devoted to additional photos and story. Of course everyone's favorite cowboy hat wearing Rally organizer/enthusiast/motorcycle rider made one of the shots...just a glutton for the camera lens...
For the first time in about a year I actually raced the "race" truck. It was up at the Team O'Neil Rally School in Dalton, NH where the SCCA put on its first stage rally race in some ten years. Many of my fellow entrants were racers I've known for years through the SCCA Rallycross program, including a couple of my prior codrivers.
The weather conditions were fantastic...it was dry and warm and my codriver this day was Tim Meunier who also ran as a driver and codriver in my little Mexican adventure last year. I was admittedly dramatically out of practice and my times showed it. I was pleased by my constant improvement from stage to stage and by then end of the day I felt like some of my pace had begun to return, though far from where I would want to be.
The mileage run on the day was pretty minor--under 20 miles--but it was a good shakedown for the truck to ensure that everything is still up and running and working properly. For the day we finished 20th out of 25 and finished every foot of every stage which would place me 16th on the day if the stage DNFs were viewed as true DNFs and not just a time penalty. Regardless, its a good first step to getting back and used to driving at speed. We'll see what's next.
So it was a busy month for developments in North American Rally now comprising four separate organizing entries in the US alone...
On the ugly and disappointing side of things is the USRA. Formed only in '14 and coming out with a number of announcements and expectations early in '15, it has fairly well thrown in the towel for the year. First off, as stated in last month's report you had the Waste Management Winter Rally which "should" have been one of the USRA's first events with organizers of the event also being party to the new Rally organization but was foiled in this attempt by supposed contractual obligations and remained with Rally America. Then there was the Matthew Noble-Mark Memorial RallySprint which also should have been an USRA event. For whatever reason (not disclosed to public by organizer) this event was cancelled outright. Lastly you then have Denise McMahon (a listed board member of the USRA) out in the Southwest announcing that "The USRA at this time is not ready to put on a rally program but should be able to take over in 2016 of what the Organizers HP RallyGroup has already in place since last year" seeming to indicate that we will not be seeing ANY events put on by the USRA in '15. Denise did announce that her own group, HP Rallygroup LLC, will be putting on the Bilstein Southwest RallyCup series that includes:
Desert Storm Rally - April 11th in Blythe, CA (coefficient 3)
Mendocino Rally - July 18/19th, in Ukiah, CA (status TBD) (coefficient 2/3)
Rally Utah - August 7/8th, in Cedar City, UT (coefficient 2/3)
Arizona Extreme Rally - September 12th, in Kingman, AZ (coeff3)
Seed 9 Rally - November 7th in Jean, NV
This is pretty darn impressive for a small (one woman?) organizing effort, many people struggle to put on a single event, let alone five, and without a National organizing/sanctioning body behind her? Going forward we will replace the USRA with updates on the HP Rallygroup events unless the USRA has anything of note to mention.
USRA grade for the month: F
Then you have the reentry to US Stage Rally of the behemoth that is the SCCA. Exiting stage rally in the early 'oughts for numerous reasons while continuing autocross on dirt for the past decade or so, the SCCA is now officially dipping its toe back in the stage rally waters. Rumored to be happening on a "test" basis for a while, the very first SCCA RallySprint was announced in late February and is to take place at the Team O'Neil facility in New Hampshire. Documents show this to be a two stage (each of some 2.5 miles in length), run multiple times event. Supposed top speeds will reach 70 mph and there will be no cones...this is a real stage rally event presenting all the risks seen at a non-sprint length event, just shortened up a tad. It will be interesting to see just how much mileage is done in the event. The entry cost is under $200 and the # of competitors is to be capped. Additionally, the individuals actually running the event are long time SCCA Rallycross and NEFR Stage Rally contributors who know how to run events pretty well. I have entered the event as is very close to me and at the price its hard to go wrong...as long as we aren't sitting around trying to tech the vehicles all morning it should be OK. I encourage the organizers to not take a real "lunch" break and just build in a brief "service period" as a normal stage rally would have. The absolute minimum amount of down time possible should be built in. I know of no other official SCCA RallySprint events that have been announced yet though I'm sure there will be soon. The SCCA has stated that it will be running RallySprints only in '15 though given most national Rally America events have deep roots in the SCCA, if the USRA isn't pressuring events to move to them in '16, I wouldn't be surprised if the SCCA was...All that said the SCCA doesn't seem to be putting much effort into promoting the RallySprint efforts with no info on it on their site, nothing broken out separately from their RallyCross or RoadRally programs, nothing in their forums...if you weren't keyed into watching websites like Jalopnik or in close contact with SCCA Rallycross staff in the New England, you might not have any idea that such a series of events is coming to fruition.
SCCA grade for the month: B
Rally America saw two events in February. First up was the aforementioned WMWR in Pennsylvania. Though the primary Rally America site provides little to no info on the event, the stand alone web page for the race reveals 14 entries (double the 7 entries seen in '14) with three Open Light Impreza's on the podium, led by Jon Kramer taking the win by a bit over five minutes and a time of 1:15. The event even generated a 7+ minute long video and interview on a Wellsboro, PA news website to be seen here:
Continuing with the "winter theme" after Sno Drift and WMWR Rally America is usually done with the snow but not so this year. With the deep freeze the US has seen this year, 100 Acre Wood was more a snow/ice rally than the very high speed gravel/dirt it typically is. The 2014 version of the event included nationally known (even outside the Rally community) racers like Pastrana and Block as well as National level competitors like L'Estage, ACP and Matt Johnson and 25 National entries. The 2015 version saw growth in the overall number of racers from 50 (25 National, 25 Regional) in '14 to 58 this year, it saw a substantial drop in National entries (from 25 to 17) and an exit of all of the aforementioned names except ACP. David Sterckx provided David Higgins only competition and finished 5:42 back of the winner. In equal vehicles and tires a Sterckx/Higgins contest would be a great thing to watch. Jim Beaver again provided nearly live radio coverage of the event, much as he did at SnoDrift. Rally-America posted "full" video coverage of SnoDrift about 10 days after the event and had posted very nice daily recaps of the event just after the finish of action each day. Rally America completed the same nice recaps for 100 Acre Wood as well. Rally America did generate a bit of negative press for itself when it reversed an earlier decision to grant Bill Caswell's "Build Race Party" photographers media access to the event, likely as a result of comments and articles from BRP asking where the National level competitors have gone and if Rally America is really being run properly--questions anyone with a brain would contemplate. Because of this action, Caswell revealed that his group had gone unpaid for an extended period of time in '14 after being hired for photo coverage of an event. Eventually he was paid he stated but not after months of collection efforts and pressure from a third party. Not exactly the way a racing organization should be run but it continues a long established pattern with Rally America.
Views on YouTube for SnoDrift Rally--17,200
Views on YouTube for 100 Acre Wood--10,600
Facebook Likes--30,556 (up from 29,748 last month)
YouTube Subscribers--10,334 (up from 10,033 last month)
Twitter Subscribers--20,000 (up from 19,700 last month)
Instagram Followers--5,296 (up from 4,246 last month)
Alexa rating of Rally-America.com--146,292 (down from 139,632 last month)
Rally America rating for the month: B
NASA Stage Rally saw one small event happen and picked up a second event as it was announced to be the sanctioning body for the RallySprint test day that was organized in the place of the failed USRA Matthew Noble Marker event.
The California Rally Series Rally School event saw 53 participants looking to learn more about the sport and get some tips from organizers and current drivers/codrivers.
The Washington Test Day #1 was put together in very short order to help accommodate the plans that a number of racers had made but were in danger of going unfulfilled due to the cancellation of the USRA event. A small turnout was expected in early March as entries are capped for the NASA test day program that was introduced this year.
NASA also released their updated version of their Android Rally Clock app to run on your phone or tablet just as NASA uses on their NOOKs. Additional NOOK developments included some online training/education on how to use their NOOK timing system via their YouTube channel where they posted a series of videos such as the one below:
NASA Stage Rally staff also attended the North American Motorsports Expo in Charlotte, NC as an outreach to educate/promote the NASA Stage Rally Program and showing off some Stage Rally vehicles to boot.
Facebook Likes--3,031 (up from 2,615 last month)
YouTube Subscribers--238 (up from 232 last month)
Twitter Subscribers--319 (up from 301 last month)
Instagram Followers--458 (up from 378 last month)
Alexa rating of 290,220 (up from 526,968 last month)
NASA Stage Rally rating for the Month: B+
As always, comments are welcome as would be a recap of events/developments of Stage Rally either North or South of the border...
Another well produced film of the race I ran in last year...kept looking to see myself in it, but no...not in there. Can imagine trying to manhandle big bikes like this in that terrain and heat...Film is well shot and quite clean however. Worth the brief 20 minute watch for a look at the terrain and race conditions.
Well, I suppose it was about time...While the NISMO Stuff Frontier was still drivable, its steering was off and couldn't go to its full range due to the UCA on the passenger side binding against the shock...
All this thanks to its last hard run back in May in Mexico which popped the tierod out of the steering rack and resulted in the bent UCA seen here. I'm finally replacing it here with a new one on each side and have the time to make these look all nice and shiny too vs. the one that went on in the "field" in Mexico after the first tierod and UCA issue in Mexico. Have new heim joints to go on both sides as well...Thanks as always to my favorite fabricator--Brandon at BTF Fabrication...
After we get these on then we tackle the issue of improving the strength of the steering...
and also need an external speaker for the Rally Truck so I can listen to tunes or the radio net when outside the vehicle. $100 for music on my transits or when waiting for a stage start? Done.
This video came out about a month ago and definitely deserves some more views. The vehicle is a Toyota GT-86 and it was run formerly in a few Rally America events but has now been completely reworked to offer even more speed and RWD insanity.
Filmed in Jean, Nevada during the Seed 9 Rally there this past early November. The Toyota was taken out on the 4th stage of the event likely due to a broken axle but set the third, third and second fastest stage times on the first three putting over a minute of time on the nearest 2WD competitor in each. I love seeing a car like this rallying out on the desert roads of the Southwest...little better...
Nameless Performance is a rally oriented aftermarket company that has recently teamed up with the famous Cosworth company out of the UK and is now using this GT86 as a promotional tool and is likely going to be the most recognizable rally vehicle in the US in 2015 as they run a full national series.
Mr. Mike Johnson of Drivers, Inc., a collection of professional drivers (inclusive of Paul Dallenbach, Rhys Millen and Greg Tracy among others) specializing in meeting the needs of the commercial, television and motion picture industries took Baja 1000 and Baja 500 victories in his class 10 buggie in '14. Along with these victories came the winning of a free entry into the 2015 edition of the Dakar.
Unfortunately a brief email exchange has revealed that he will not be able to take advantage of this opportunity. Due to an impending shoulder injury requiring surgery and extensive recovery time and Johnson will not be entered in the 2015 Dakar.
He is however looking to the future in regards to the international exposure that the Dakar could bring both himself and his sponsors:
"My tire sponsor (Radar Tires) still really wants to do it so we may try to put a program together for 2016. I think it's a great thing what Roger Norman, SCORE and the Dakar guys are doing to get the two series together, it will only help strengthen each series both in outside interest (fans) as well as sponsors & TV worldwide."
One last item of note--the Dakar organizers do not allow you to carry over a free entry win from one year to the next so unfortunately Johnson will have to go back out and with the free entry again in '15 if he or Radar Tires or others are not going to pay for the entry fee out of pocket. Its a use it or lose it proposition. A shame really but likely an appropriate one designed to encourage entries to come to the event rather than just leave it out there as an idea to always hold in your back pocket for when the "time is right".
Thanks to Mike for the brief conservation and make a quick recovery!
I picked the Quigley 4x4 Van as the 2013 "winner" of this title and many seemed to agree. They DNF'd and never saw the end of the race but certainly put in a solid effort before returning stateside.
This year I am "awarding" (?) this title to an entry just showing up on the entry list.
Ikuo Hanawa is a long time Baja aficionado having run there a number of times as well as at Pikes Peak on occasion including behind the wheel of an electric vehicle.
For '14 Hanawa is coming to Baja with a completely new vehicle of his own design and build (from what I can decipher from the translated Japanese on his Facebook page). He also lists it as his Baja/Dakar vehicle so maybe we'll see it in South America in a few months as well? It certainly looks the Dakar part being VERY small looking with a non-existent rear end, and a wholly enclosed shell with dual spares almost completely covered.
The video Hanawa has posted lists the 2WD vehicle as having about 23 1/2 inches of front end travel and about 21 1/2 inches in the rear. King bypass and coils dampen the front while the wheels are wrapped in 315/70R17 Yokohama Geolander A/T-S. I'm not sure what type of transmission is in it but it looks to be a fairly stock version (maybe even a stock Nissan 370Z tranny?) as the video shows Hanawa rowing through the gears, certainly no sequential transmission present. The engine in the vehicle is a Nissan 3.7L VQ37VHR V6 out of a 370Z putting out around 332 HP, while the "body" is completely tube framed and yet the vehicle will somehow be classified as a Nissan Frontier in SCORE's class 7 for "Open Mini-Trucks". If there's a Frontier part on it, I'd be shocked.
It certainly looks like a foreign designed and built vehicle with an emphasis on a small size and light weight. How its rather spindly looking suspension and steering holds up to the roughness of Baja will soon be seen. I'll be rooting for him but having my doubts as to its ability to stay in one piece. I would have expected that Hanawa has enough Baja experience to know what he is asking of his vehicle and have designed it accordingly--so what do I know? My vehicle broke down every day I raced it the 2014 NORRA event, so clearly I don't have the answer.
As always for me, seeing something besides a Geiser Trophy Truck powered by some massive Cheby crate motor is the more captivating portion of this race. I'm in the minority but I'm more of an underdog, root for the guy who is likely to lose, sort of person. With someone like Hanawa and his Japanese engined, Dakar style buggie, some eyes might at least be pulled away from the carbon copy lineup one usually sees...if only for a moment.
To follow along with this effort, Ikuo Hanawa is #712. Tracking should begin tomorrow 11/13. The "other" Nissan Frontier in the race that I spoke of the other day is #2003. Best of luck to both of them!
My wife and I have frequently tried to collect sand from the beaches and locales we've visited over our time together and display it in little jars in our home as a nice, cheap keepsake and reminder of where we've been. Amongst my many disappointments from my attempt at the NORRA Mexican 1000 was the fact that I didn't collect any sand from anywhere along the near two thousand miles we traversed of the Baja peninsula.
So some six months later I've finally begun to seriously take apart the
NISMOStuff Frontier and head towards preparing it for 2015. As I begin unbolting some steering and suspension components I notice that there sure appears to be a great deal of sand and silt packed into my frame. Then I proceed to unbolt the skidplates and a sheet of powdery silt comes raining down on my garage floor. Vacuuming up good deal of the light tan talcum like sand (?) brings me back to digging out the truck in the Mexican heat, dozens of miles from...well...nowhere. Broken parts, broken trailer, broken van, lost teammates, etc....it all comes back.
I now have a large ziploc bag filled with some five pounds of Baja Mexico silt. Some of this silt will be going in a jar on a shelf in my house to help bring back all those imbedded memories again and again. The rest? Maybe make a little silt bed in my own backyard? Thanks again to Elliot Sherwod, Paul Hartl and Tim Meunier for plowing my truck through various silt beds and "collecting" all this sand for me, only to be revealed some six months later. Baja...the gift that keeps on giving!
At least it currently looks that way!
Los Angeles resident Glen Tanizawa has had this race in mind for a number of years now and has been transforming his Frontier into a SCORE compliant racer over the course of at least the past year with a significant amount of the work (of course) taking place in the last few months, weeks and days.
Glen and I have talked a bit back and forth with him being particularly interested in my efforts to race down the Baja peninsula earlier this year in my Nissan Frontier during the NORRA 1000. Both the NORRA 1000 that I raced in and this year's Baja 1000 ran the entire length of the peninsula though the B1K is an whole order of difficulty greater than the NORRA event.
Unlike the NORRA 1000 there is zero downtime in the race. We at least had each evening to try and make repairs and recover...not so in the B1K. Glenn and his crew will have to go non-stop for likely close to 48 hours if they hope to finish. They will also be taking on a course significantly more difficult that what I encountered--bigger rocks, deeper silt, steeper inclines, etc. and will have much fewer "transit" sections that we had in the NORRA event where we covered at least some of the mileage on pavement.
It is a HUGE undertaking, one that defies my imagination even having gotten a taste of what Baja racing entails earlier this year. If you want to follow along with Glenn you can certainly go to his personal Facebook page and "friend" him to get updates before the race. The race begins on 11/13 with the motorcycles off the line at 6AM local time and cars/trucks beginning at 12:30PM local time. Running in the Sportsman 2000 class under #2003, Glenn should be starting darn near the very last of the vehicles to race, probably not until close to 3PM. It has been years since a Nissan vehicle has even entered a SCORE event, let alone finish a B1K (I believe Bob Graham and his Nissan Titan was the last Nissan vehicle to finish a SCORE event back in '07) and I wish Glenn the best of luck.
If I have any advice coming out of my experiences? Go slow. Real slow. As slow as you think you're going?? Go slower. Stock or near stock vehicle components are just not meant to endure that terrain for any length of time. You will get lulled into thinking you can go faster than is actually smart and you will be hauling ass down a fire road like course at 80 mph or better and then you'll run right into a minefield of rocks, ruts and ditches while your adrenalin is still coursing from driving with your hair ablaze...Knowing how to flick that switch between the two types of driving is huge.
Regardless, what you find here in photos are some of the build and development photos of Glenn's Frontier. Enjoy and drop Glenn a line if you can. I'm sure he could use the pat on the back and encouragement.
When you are involved in a sport that generally attracts a few dozen to a few hundred spectators over the course of a weekend event and there are constant hand-wringing sessions over what can be done to improve the visibility of the sport and get more people at least AWARE of it so there is some potential for new blood to be brought it, getting the sport in front of the eyes of tens of thousands of people in a short period of time is a huge deal.
In combination with Ryan Millen and his stage rally Rav4 and Toyota, what you see photos of here went traveling around to the 17 some odd Supercross events in the first half of '16. With total attendance for Supercross events pushing over 3/4 of a million individuals and a constant stream of people throwing on the VR goggles and riding along with Ryan Millen in the Rav4 down some dirt roads in California, it would have done a Stage Rally organization a great deal of good if it could have partnered with Ryan and/or Toyota to put some kind of "For more info about Stage Rally, go here: XXXX" or "If you want to get into racing cars in the dirt like Ryan and his Rav4 see this: XXXX", etc. At the very least it could have gotten a lot of eyeballs on the sport and let them know that the sport is out there.
