MINI Corvettes
Annual challenge set for Saturday
April 20, 2006

ALICIA CARMICHAEL, The Daily News

More than 25 custom-built, mini, sporty cars will zip around a track in the Sears parking lot at Greenwood Mall on Saturday during the 12th annual Junior Achievement Mini Corvette Challenge.

Clinton Mills and his twin brother, Chris, will race in a car sponsored by their company Hitcents.com. The brothers are looking forward to the event, especially since they will get the chance to race their dad, Ed Mills, who is on a General Motors Corvette Assembly Plant team. “It’s been a lot of fun around the office getting to talk about it, saying you’re going to win,” Clinton Mills said.

But taking part in the Mini Corvette Challenge is about more than a good time for the Mills brothers, who through their business, which features e-commerce, Web development and more, are developing a Web site for Junior Achievement of South Central Kentucky’s office. They want to support Junior Achievement’s mission to teach school kids, for free, about economics and entrepreneurship.

“I’m a young entrepreneur and I think it’s good to support younger entrepreneurs,” Clinton Mills, 23, said.

Andy Mayes, of the Atmos Energy team, also said he’s glad to help Junior Achievement’s mission through what is one of the organization’s biggest fundraisers.

“They do a lot for our youth as far as helping them to advance and know more avenues to do better things,” he said.

Now, he’s also looking forward to racing in the challenge.

“We enjoy it and it benefits a lot of other people,” he said.

Atmos Energy will cook hamburgers and hot dogs to sell at the challenge, which will be from 9:30 p.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday.

At 11:30 a.m., during a break in the racing action, there will be a Sears Craftsman Challenge lawnmower relay between local school employees.

Other activities, which will take place throughout the challenge, include a car show, children’s games and activities and an appearance by Lindsay Daniels, driver in the Automobile Racing Club of America Truck Series and Miniature Motorsports Racing Association Pro Division. Daniels will have her race vehicles on display.

While there will be a charge for some of the activities, there will be no charge to watch the Mini Corvettes race.

Heather Rogers, president of JA, said she thinks the public will enjoy the racing, which can be seen from bleachers."

The teams are made up of five individuals,” she said. “Three of them serve as the pit crew and two are drivers. So during the race they have to make a pit stop and switch drivers and also change a tire, so that breaks it up a little bit and you can really gain time or lose time, depending on how good your pit crew is.”

This year, 103.7 FM radio will broadcast the races live.

“So it will be loud and give it a good racing atmosphere,” Rogers said.

In addition, there will be wireless cameras on the Hitcents.com car, “and we are going to have a booth for people to watch live racing through the wireless feed,” Clinton Mills said.

Because each of the teams racing in the challenge is partnering with a local school, children can cheer for their team while raising money for their school, through a Papa John’s Pride Cup, by signing up at the challenge on race day.

“The school that has the most kids (and faculty) sign up on race day gets a $500 cash prize, and the kids that signed in get a pizza party at Papa John’s,” Rogers said.

Last year’s Mini Corvette Challenge raised $31,000 through sponsorship and sales race day for Junior Achievement, which serves 11,000 children in southcentral Kentucky.

“It’s important that we get the support from the community because that’s really where all our funding comes from,” Rogers said. “We’re not government funded or a United Way agency. We need funding to provide programs free to area schools.”

Houchens Industries is the presenting sponsor of the challenge.

Other sponsors include Gold Cup contributor U.S. Bank, Silver Cup sponsor GM Corvette Plant and Bronze Cup donor Huish Detergents.

In addition to the teams from Hitcents.com, Atmos Energy and GM, which has three teams, teams racing in the Corvette Challenge are from Crossroads IGA, Jr. Foods, U.S. Bank, Halton Co., Huish Detergents, Sun/Dollar General, The Point 103.7, BlueCotton, Blue Ridge Group, Coca Cola, Dollar General, The Liberty Group, Minit Mart, Nyloncraft, International Coin Reserve, Source Capitol Group, Southern Foods, Trace Die Cast, Wachovia Securities, WBKO-TV, WDNS – D-93 FM, Western Kentucky University.

Copyright 2006 News Publishing LLC (Bowling Green, KY)