Page updated: 06/14/2002 02:57 PM
Eastern Rock Crawling
Championship
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Hard Core Competition... East-Coast
Style! |
Anticipation was building as the
weekend of ERoCC grew closer. We all wondered how many people would show up.
We wondered what the rigs would be like. We all had many thoughts and
wonders about what was going to go down. To put it mildly, this was
one of the most thought-out, organized 4-wheeling events I have seen, right
down to smallest detail.
All the fun kicked off on Friday, April 19th in Jellico, Tennesse with the
show-n-shine. Many locals came by just to drop their jaws in amazement of
all these finely built rigs. One local resident stated, "I thought things
like this were only in movies...I didn't know people really made things like
this!", as he stared at Rusty Bray's rig with tubes encompassing the whole
thing. Yes, this event was going to definitely cause a stir among the
locals, and with the rockcrawling community in the whole country.
Many members of the Trailkeepers volunteered countless weekends to make this
event happen. Whether it is cutting down dead trees, clearing the obstacles,
making places for spectators to watch, or making the trails back to each
obstacle, everyone worked diligently at JROCC. JROCC is known as the
Jellico Rock Obstacle Course Challenge,
http://www.jrocc.com,
which is where the ERoCC event,
http://www.erocc.com, is
held.
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The main event started on Saturday, and we all were
anxiously waiting how the day would go. We had 21 vehicles at this
inaugural event, and we all knew that there would be some real crowd
pleasing moments. Moments like when our cover boy, Tom "Full Throttle"
Diviak showed why the side of his Jeep says Full Throttle on it, when he
hit the gas wide-open in his 454 powered CJ, to jump up on to Table Top. |
| In the Legend class, which is the smaller division, Jeff Walthew took first in his camo Scrambler, followed by Jack Bettio, who came all the way from New Jersey, and John C. Lindsey in third place. First, second and third place in all classes won their take of the purse, plus a trophy. First through tenth place in both classes also qualified to compete the World Supercrawl being held in Farmington, New Mexico in October. | |
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| The Unlimited class was a very fierce competition, with only a few points separating second through fourth place on Saturday. We all knew that Ken Shupe was going to be the winner without a question, unless something freakishly happened on Sunday. The race was on, though, for second and third place on Sunday, with everyone keeping an eye peeled on these high-class competitors. | |
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| As the competition started on Sunday, everyone was anticipating a close race for the number two spot. Hamilton, Bray, and Durham were up and down all day, running so close together. Chris Durham and his spotter Ron Barton, showed their experience on Sunday, as they advanced to take 2nd place. Then, Rusty had a run-in with bad luck which knocked him out of the top three places. He somehow landed on this rock with all four tires off the ground on the obstacle rightly named, Triple Winch. He knew then that he was done, so he called on Justin to use the winch. This put Hamilton into third with the wildly modified Toyota. | |
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With the sport of rockcrawling, we all know that rollovers occur.
Luckily, only two major ones happened this weekend, but both drivers are
fine. Also, with this sport, we get major breakage sometimes on rigs. But,
people live and learn, and everyone that had major breakage, that was not
fixable on the trail, stuck around to watch all the great action. Overall,
nothing negative came out of this weekend.
ERoCC is a UROC sanctioned event, and the top ten finishers in each ERoCC
event will advance to the World Supercrawl in Farmington, New Mexico this
fall. Two more qualifying events are being held June 21 - 23, 2002 and July
26 - 28, 2000. The finals are September 6-8, 2002. Get ready for more great
action to come. For more info, contact Tim Rettig or Chad Adams at
http://www.erocc.com.
 The Unimog scared everyone with this end-over-end on Luv Handle |
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 Rusty having trouble on Table Top |
All pictures are courtesy of Greg Hiens at
http://www.rujpn2.net
and Travis Smith