Fast female meets sprint car racing

Kensley Shearer is a freshman at Big Spring high school. Though she seems like she lives an average life, she is one of the only girls who does sprint car racing. Shearer went to watch her first ever sprint car race with her dad and his friends in 2014.  Ever since then she’s had a passion for racing. This girl from a small town plans to do big things with her hobby of sprint car racing, and it’s a male dominated team that she plans to shake up. Though she seems quiet and reserved to her peers, she keeps her energy for when she’s on the track. The norm as a teenager is doing sports, but Shearer decided to thrive in sprint car racing instead. It’s not always normal for a teen but her dad could not be prouder.

Her dad is one of her role models, and he motivates her to keep racing since he’s the one who introduced her to it. She went and watched races with her dad and his friends for four years before deciding to start racing herself. Her other role model is Brian Monteith located out of PA. She said, “I like the way he drives. Someday I want to race like him, but I’m not there just yet.” She went on to say that he inspired her in the way that she chose her colors to be similar to his car and picked the same number as him #21 for her racing purposes. Shearer has met her role model many times and described him as being “very nice.” She get’s a lot of inspiration from Monteith and hopes to race like him someday. 

She has fully raced for one full year so far, but plans on racing a lot more in the future. The season lasts from April to October when they practice racing. When racing season isn’t in, they spend time working on their cars. During the season, they race every other weekend during that weekend they race at seven different tracks. Each race is based off of 20 laps and winners are determined by who finishes the laps first. A big part of racing is moving up through cars and continuing to get bigger sprint cars. One of Shearer’s goals is to move up to a 410 sprint car. Shearer doesn’t see any goal too big or too far fetched. 

There are only two girls who race, Shearer and a lady in her 30’s. She is the only teen girl racer on the whole team. She said, “I felt left out in some ways. Often some of the guys would get get mad at me for messing up.” She said, “It would be nice to have other girls on the team around my age so I could rant to them about the boys.” Though it took some getting used to she describes the team as a family on and off of the tracks. Shearer has learned a lot since just starting last year, she had a unique experience since she was the only young girl. She has many incites when it comes to what it is like to start sprint car racing. When first starting off Shearer said “It’s important to learn the basics before you jump into a car or you’ll make mistakes like me.” Shearer is one of the only girls in her sprint car racing league and doesn’t plan on quitting any time soon.