With lyrics from the Katy Perry song “California Girls” plastered on the side of her soap box derby car, Ellen Blackwell shows the boys on the West Coast who’s fast on the track.
Blackwell, a 15-year-old sophomore at Righetti High School, has been racing soapbox derby for more than six years. She’s done very well for herself behind the wheel of her gravity-powered racecar, winning a local championship in Ventura in the Super Stock class and winning a local championship in La Mesa in the Masters class.
Those two championships gave Blackwell the opportunity to go to the All-American Soap Box Derby World Championships in Akron, Ohio. Blackwell is sponsored by Brat-fink Racing and says she doesn’t worry at all about rubbing wheels with her competitors on the soap box derby track. She earned her toughness while playing on a roller derby team for a year. When Blackwell isn’t gliding along with her elbows out on the roller derby track or racing along in her car on the soap box derby track, she’s also involved in FFA and the 4-H Club.
On Sept. 17, Blackwell went down to Ventura to compete in an All-American Soap Box derby event and found herself having to run against Gus Krider, the 2011 All-American Soap Box Derby International Champion. Blackwell made it to the finals and took the international champion down two times, earning herself two hard-fought first-place finishes in the Masters division. Blackwell has proven once again “West Coast girls represent!”
Blackwell will get the chance to show her friends at Righetti High School what soap box derby is all about when a National Derby Rallies race comes to Santa Maria on May 5 and 6 of 2012. For more information about soap box derby, go to aasbd.org or ndr.org.
This article appears in Oct 6-13, 2011.
