{"id":13785,"date":"2013-07-18T15:00:43","date_gmt":"2013-07-18T19:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/?p=13785"},"modified":"2013-07-18T07:52:54","modified_gmt":"2013-07-18T11:52:54","slug":"crazy-horse-racing-chr-oxford-hills-middle-school-team-up-for-oxford-250","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/crazy-horse-racing-chr-oxford-hills-middle-school-team-up-for-oxford-250\/","title":{"rendered":"CRAZY HORSE RACING: CHR, Oxford Hills Middle School Team Up For Oxford 250"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sessions<\/a>Veteran driver Sam Sessions Gets The Call Behind The Wheel As \u201cAspire Higher\u201d Program Comes To Fruition This Weekend<\/em><\/p>\n

SOUTH PARIS, Maine \u2013 No matter what happens in the Oxford 250, a group of Oxford Hills Middle School students will see this weekend as a success.<\/p>\n

Veteran Sam Sessions of South Paris, Maine, will enter the \u201cAspire Higher\u201d No. 0 Oxford Hills Middle School Chevrolet in the 40th annual TD Bank Oxford 250 at Oxford Plains Speedway in Oxford, Maine, on Sunday, July 21. It will mark Sessions’ first race at Oxford Plains in seven years, and it comes in a car that has a very special background.<\/p>\n

Oxford Hills Middle School students in the school’s \u201cAspire Higher\u201d program have joined Crazy Horse Racing owner Mitch Green over the last two years in taking the No. 0 car from an idea to a reality.
\n
\n\u201cTwo years ago, (OHMS principal) Troy Eastman had the idea that the classroom is not always the best place for kids to learn,\u201d said Green, who spent 20 years as a schoolteacher. \u201cI looked at him and I said, ‘You know what? Anything’s possible.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Groups of four students at a time every Thursday afternoon have headed to Crazy Horse Racing’s shop in South Paris to begin building a race car from the ground up. They’ve measured, shaped, cut and angled more metal than they likely care to keep track of anymore, but the result of the hard work is a completed race car that will debut this weekend in the Oxford 250.<\/p>\n

Sessions will provide the crew \u2013 the same crew that helped him finish third in the 2006 Oxford 250 \u2013 and the hauler and myriad equipment that goes along with getting a car to the race track and making it capable of performing on race day.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it’s a great project,\u201d Sessions said. \u201cThe first I heard about that deal was a couple of years ago, when one of the kids’ parents came to my shop and said he was thinking about doing it and wondered if I’d help out with it. I told him, if you’r going to do that, you’ve got to go to somebody like Mitch. You might get something put together with me or somebody else, but you are not going to go to the Oxford 250 with home-built car with people who haven’t been around it for a while and be competitive. You need to have someone who’s been in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Green, who grew up with Sessions, said getting the local driver with an impressive resume was an important component to a project that was born right in the heart of Oxford County.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was talk at one time about trying to get a (NASCAR) driver to come and drive the car, but you know what? This is a community project,\u201d Green said. \u201cCommunity taxpayers and grants are funding this. Let’s get a driver that can represent the car and the community and has some infrastructure of their own, too. I had Sammy Sessions in the back of my head right from the get-go.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the OHMS students helped build the car, the project also took on other facets of race team management. A number of students, Green said, started looking at marketing and finances associated with the race car. In all, more than two dozen students participated in the \u201cAspire Higher\u201d project with Crazy Horse Racing at some point.<\/p>\n

Once this edition of the Oxford 250 is over, the project will continue to soldier on.<\/p>\n

\u201c(The school) is going to keep the car. I think it would be better in all ways to keep it \u2013 then in the fall, we can rip it down, build it again and do it all over,\u201d Green said. \u201cI think it will help them get more independent from us, where they can have a teacher who is responsible for the curriculum. Of course, we’ll continue to help in any way we can.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my 20 years, I taught some kids that were hardcore kids \u2013 but they were great kids. They just weren’t chalk-and-talk setting kids. The thing I enjoy about this, the race car was a tool to use to help these kids learn, to help keep them up in school, to help keep their behavior up. That’s the stuff that’s important to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

But simply getting the car to Oxford Plains Speedway this weekend is not the end. Both Green and Sessions are clear that the car will be there to race.<\/p>\n

The name of the game in the Oxford 250 is competition, and Sessions is all for it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI make no bones about it \u2013 and I’ve told Mitch this right from the beginning \u2013 I have no interest in just being there to show a car,\u201d said Sessions, who won the richest race in Maine stock car racing history \u2013 the $100,000 Big Dawg 400 at Wiscasset Speedway in 2003. \u201cI raced for years out of my own shop with my own guys, and we were pretty successful with a low-budget team. I have no interest in going down there (to Oxford Plains Speedway) just to make an appearance.
\n\u201cWe’re there to try and win the race.\u201d<\/p>\n

No matter where Sessions finishes in Sunday’s main event, however, Green is already satisfied.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s absolutely a unique thing that’s happened in New England. As far as I know, no other school out there has done something like this,\u201d Green said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has been a success. The outcome will be whatever the outcome is on Sunday, just like anything else in racing. But the outcome of the race is not what will deem this project successful or not. With these kids it’s already a success.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Veteran driver Sam Sessions Gets The Call Behind The Wheel As \u201cAspire Higher\u201d Program Comes To Fruition This Weekend SOUTH PARIS, Maine \u2013 No matter what happens in the Oxford 250, a group of Oxford Hills Middle School students will see this weekend as a success. Veteran Sam Sessions of South Paris, Maine, will enter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,124],"tags":[15144],"class_list":["post-13785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-maine","category-oxford-plains-spedway","tag-crazy-horse-racing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13785\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}