Julie Hammons started volunteering with the Sports Car Club of America® at a Memorial Day event in 1981. “In those days, you worked on a logbook before you were approved,” she explains. “I didn’t become a member until 1986.” Since then, though, she’s gained skills that are to be admired, ultimately being presented with SCCA’s Race Administration Worker of the Year Award presented by Mazda in 2023.

Julie’s foray into the SCCA began in Timing & Scoring. “You have a place where you could get coffee in the back room, people would bring cookies and treats, and you had a roof over your head,” she recalls. “In Minnesota, that’s important!”

The racetrack is also where she met her husband, Dale. “When we were dating, I’d be in Timing & Scoring, and he’d be doing Tech – I never got to see him,” she laughs. “It was kind of silly. So, I decided to venture into that scary world of doing Tech. Timing & Scoring was very social, [but] you don’t get to be hands-on with the cars. You just try to keep up with the pace and not make mistakes. Going over to Tech was an education about racing.”

There was a time from the late 1990s until about 2004 when the track owner at Brainerd concentrated on drag racing, so the Region – Land O’Lakes – focused on rally, autocross, and other events. Julie was asked to work on the Pro Racing side of SCCA, becoming a Tech Administrator for the Toyota Atlantic series and even working on promotion for the series.

“It was an even more intense education,” she admits.

When a new owner took over the track, he separated the track so both drag and road racing could take place at the same time. Julie quickly asked for her old job back, but getting road racing going again in the Region was hard work – people had found other things to do. Regardless, they pushed on, and volunteers had to take on multiple duties. The Regional Executive, for example, was also doing Race Administration and other jobs. A new RE asked volunteers to take on different roles, and Julie was tasked with Race Administration.

“I couldn’t say no,” she says. “I needed to give back to this Club that had given me so much.”

2017 was her first year in Race Admin, and she’s been going ever since.

So, what is involved in Race Administration? “I think of it like a program manager or a logistics kind of thing, with a little hospitality thrown in with it,” she explains. “We are a small to medium Region – usually three racing events. I get the supps and the schedule together, coordinate that with the Chief Steward, and get those into the portal at scca.com to get our sanction.”

Julie, as with many SCCA members, stays in the Club for the friends she’s made. “You can’t think of anything more fun than getting together with friends and being around race cars,” she says. “It’s just the perfect combination, I think. I like other sports and other forms of racing, but road racing is the best.”

When asked about other specialties she’d like to try, she commented, “I don’t think corners – my knees would say no. Stewards? That takes a very special person. In the Atlantic series, I did everything in the paddock and pit lane, just not in the tower. So, I think I’ve pretty much touched everything.”

She also said that she’d be OK with retiring. “More spectating; less work,” she says. Those plans hopefully won’t happen soon, though, as we suspect others in this Club will want her to keep doing what she does so well.

Photo courtesy Julie Hammons and ©Google Earth/Airbus