Sean Reddish on the Future of Hare Scrambles

It may have been a relatively quiet one, but last weekend marked the start of a new era of Hare Scrambles racing – at least on the West Coast. Some big changes went down a few months ago in the world of off-road racing, starting with the World Off Road Championship Series (WORCS) picking up an AMA sanction. Along with that sanction, WORCS Promoter Sean Reddish also picked up the AMA Western Hare Scrambles Series (WHS) – a budding program that was struggling to stand on its own.

In 2008, the WHS was, at best, a collection of club races strung together with an "AMA National" logo on it – and hats-off to those hard-working clubs who made it happen last year – but the series still had a way to go in terms of becoming a true national-caliber program.

Now under the direction of Reddish and the WORCS crew, the WHS is one round into the new season, which took place on March 7-8 at Rynoland in Anza, California. After a little racing on Saturday, we sat down with Reddish on Sunday -- one hour into the Pro race – to see what he had planned for the AMA Western National Hare Scrambles Series presented by Tusk, both in the short term and the long run.

The season has officially started; how’s it going so far?
It’s really going well. The races went smooth all the way through – all the races started on time which is the one thing I wanted to make sure happened through the Hare Scrambles series. Everybody’s stoked. It’s a completely off-road course. I think a lot of people know my history and they thought, "There’s gotta be some motocross in it..." and here at Rynoland there’s three motocross tracks to pick from and we chose everything but the motocross tracks. I think we really found an off-road course here that everybody liked.

In taking over the series, is it something you sought out or did this kind of land in your lap?
A little bit of both. I grew up racing this type of stuff out of Texas and it’s something I would like to see do well. I knew it was a gamble, totally. When we became an AMA program for WORCS, I used GNCC as a little bit of a model. They have some Hare Scrambles races in their program. Given the fact that the AMA said the Hare Scrambles Series was going to die this year on the West because there wasn’t enough promoters. I said, "You know what? If that’s what it takes, I’ll step up. We’ll do individual races and we’ll co-sanction a few initially and then we’ll look at 2010 to see what we can do to bring more clubs in."
The Hare Scrambles series was pretty much all but abandoned and it was just something that people put on their events as kind of a tag and didn’t really take it to heart that it was a national caliber event. When the Pro line started here today, I think we had a national caliber crew on the line.

A lot of people complained last year about a lack of consistency in the Hare Scrambles Series, given that each race was put on by a different club as opposed to having a single organization behind the whole program.
I heard the exact same thing. I grew up in a club environment as well, and I remember not getting home until midnight because our race started three hours late. The schedules might change throughout the weekend, but you’ll know that before you get there. We’re trying to re-vamp this so that it works for everybody, and there may still be some schedule changes that come. But the schedule you get when you show up is the schedule that you’ll race, and we’re going to be on time.
The consistency of product is what we at WORCS specialize in and we wanted to transfer that over. All these people that are working over here for the Western Hare Scrambles Series have worked with us in the past and know what we want for our racers and what we want for our end product. I think consistency is the number one thing that you’ll get now.

That’s obviously going to be a significant immediate change. What do you have in mind for the long term with the West Hare Scrambles Series?
Had the ecomony not done what it did, I think we’d see factory involvement again fairly quickly because it is a different discipline. It doesn’t cater at all to the motocross person. It caters to the guy that can do the real tight, first-gear riding.
I think long-term projection is just to provide a solid series that’s safe, family fun, that everybody can ride. I think there’s going to be overall growth to the series to where all classes are full – is the number one goal – and when people leave they say, "You know what? I had a great time and I was done riding when [the race was over]."

Several events are going to be co-sanctioned with WORCS. Will they be run on the same course?
Yes. There are three events that are co-sanctioned with WORCS. Those will be WORCS format. There’s no way to change that because in the WORCS series, we run 13 separate races throughout the weekend and everybody gets to race two to three times, four different series championships. In Hare Scrambles, there’s really no way to do that. But on the Hare Scrambles weekends that we’re co-sanctioned together, it will run the WORCS format. It will be a shorter race than what they’re normally used to (two hours as opposed to a three-hour Hare Scrambles race). However, if they want to race a second race, they’ll be able to for the weekend and have some more time on the track.

In the future, are you looking to do more than seven rounds in the WHS season?
I don’t know. I think two national programs for off-road on the West Coast is a lot... if they’re dead-serious. I want to have seven great off-road rounds right now. Right now we’re gonna have about four great off-road rounds that are true Hare Scrambles format and we’re going to have three great off-road rounds that are WORCS-style. The intent is to never really pull it completely away from WORCS – there will probably always be a race or two co-sanctioned.

The GNCC (Grand National Cross Country) Series also co-sanctions Hare Scrambles races in the Eastern series, correct?
Correct. The GNCC sanctions at least two events. But the clubs in the East are a little bit stronger as far as their format and their regularity and I think that’s because the AMA has always been seen as an East-coast sanctioning body. They do have West-coast offices now, but there’s been more inclusion over there and we were the last series, as far as WORCS, to not be an AMA (program) at the national level. I think we’re trying to help pull them out here and get more involved. There could be a lot more involvement and there needs to be a lot more involvement at (the AMA’s) level on the West side.

That actually surprised us to hear that WORCS picked up the AMA sanction. How did that come about?
We discussed it back in 2003 and there’s been a lot of changes in the AMA – not all of them positive, just like with any company. They’re going through a huge transition right now. And for us, we needed to see all those transitions happen before we could get involved. They also know that we were 100% successful without the AMA sanction.
What we hope this is, at the end of the day, is the good marriage of two programs going in one direction. Our success needs to be their success and vice-versa. They changed a lot of things, they made some concessions, they made us feel comfortable and that’s really what we had to do because as independent business owners, just like the GNCC, we have to feel comfortable with our business first, and our business is the priority. The AMA is supposed to complement it, and we’re supposed to bring a solid, professional event to the AMA.

Moving forward, is there going to be any club involvement with the West Hare Scrambles events?
Yes. This year we have one club that’s running the Monticello event (at Bull Hollow in Utah).
We tried to work with one of the districts this year (District 36) and it was completely unsuccessful. It was, to say the least, extremely frustrating. We tried extremely hard to work with them, but because of how things were handled, it just didn’t run well with them.
Our goal was to work with District 36 – and District 37 – to where we include all those guys in these programs. Most of the time when they see a Pro or two come out, it’s one of the WORCS factory guys that is just there practicing. We want them to come participate at that level and get to see those racers and be there for the autographs and see the semis and factory rigs. My goal is to work with the districts but it has to be in the direction of being efficient, registration being efficient, scoring being the exact same, so it’s consistency of product. If that doesn’t work, the Western National Hare Scrambles will always stand on its own and just be the consistent off-road series.

The clubs could also be very beneficial in the way of helping create good off-road courses.
The clubs have access to some properties that we wouldn’t have access to. And some of them are great. The clubs have a lot of great things to offer. They have great people, they have a good general infrastructure but the difference between a club and a professional business is that a professional business can change tomorrow what didn’t work today. A club can change it next year. There will be survey forms that go out for this event. If there’s a major change that needs to happen, it’ll be done at Hollister.
The clubs are good at organizing a lot of people while WHS and Off-Road Sports are good at organizing the event. I think those two can come together really well for everybody. I want these clubs to be successful and make the revenues they need because a lot of that goes to charity and benefits. So we hope, 100%, that we can get at least two to three clubs involved for 2010 and our goal, primarily, is one club in Arizona initially. And then we want one, for sure, in California.

Are you looking to bring the WHS to the desert?
Yeah, actually. One of our colleagues on the West Coast has a great desert program – Casey Folks*. This weekend he’s running one of the best Hare Scrambles races in the country at Laughlin. I would love to get him to be able to do that, but he’s not an AMA program either. So there are some hurdles to get over. But I would venture to say that just like in our program, 75% of his riders are already AMA members. If it would amp up the event and make it a better, special, unique event, I think maybe they could have that. But that’s more of a private conversation for Casey and I.

*Casey Folks runs Best in the Desert (BITD)

Obviously your main goal is to propagate WORCS, and when you commented that two West Coast off-road series’ is a lot, do you see the WHS sticking around?
I have a five-year commitment to the AMA to make the Western Hare Scrambles the pre-eminent, true off-road program. I have that commitment to the AMA. Within that, there will always be some mix with WORCS, whether it’s one event or two. The goal is to do a few less. We only have three this year, so if we could do two [next year], that would be great. The goal is for the WHS over the next five years to take off that tarnish that’s been put on it. The WHS program has kinda just been left to its own druthers and you didn’t know if anybody would show up to a Hare Scrambles race. That will be the test. In a year or two, if it’s strictly a Hare Scrambles race, how many people will show up? That’ll tell you (if the series has a long-term future).

Do you have any other announcements for things we’ll see from you in 2009?
As far as WORCS is concerned, going back to Glen Helen is kind of neat because the industry’s there.
The second thing is that we’re doing the week-long amateur event at Straddleline (Washington). My favorite place to race WORCS right now is in Washington because I’m a tree guy. The first weekend is the Hare Scrambles race that’s true Western Hare Scrambles format. Mid-week we intend on doing a motocross and then we’ll do our WORCS-cross event and then the WORCS National event on the following weekend. That is the first two weekends in August.

For updates and more information on the Western Hare Scrambles Series presented by Tusk, visit www.WesternHareScrambles.com. For the 2009 Rocky Mountain ATV/MC World Off Road Championship Series, visit www.WORCSracing.com.