The Vault
ROGER VAN DAALWYK – BECAME WIR’S GM AT 18-YEARS-OLD
Posted on: Wednesday November 23, 2022
This book available for purchase. Simply click on the “books” tab on the upper left corner of this website.
(The following is an excerpt from the 2016 release “Wisconsin International Raceway – Where The Big Ones Run.” It’s titled “All In The Family” and features Roger Van Daalwyk, who took over as the track’s General Manager at the age of 18.)
Before it become one of the most prominent paved track facilities in the Midwest, Wisconsin International Raceway started out as 120 acres of woodlands, grass and hills owned by a local farmer at highway 55 and County road KK in Kaukauna.
Local businessman Joe Van Daalwyk owned a construction company, among other local businesses. In 1963 Van Daalwyk partnered up with fellow Fox Valley residents Connie DeLuew and Clyde Schumacher and began building what was initially called KK Sports Arena. It started out as a half-mile dirt track, with a paved quarter-mile oval inside, which also contained a Figure 8 track on the inside. The trio also built a dragstrip behind the oval.
When it was initially built the track had a retaining pond in the infield.
As a young teen Joe Van Daalwyk’s son Roger Van Daalwyk wound up doing a little bit of everything when it came to building the facility. “He’d have me drive dump truck when I was real young – well before I had a driver’s license,” said Van Daalwyk. “I would help build bleachers, pop popcorn and stock coolers on race day. I’d do all of the weed eating before the races and clean up all the garbage after the shows. I’ve done most of the jobs there at some point growing up.” Van Daalwyk would ride his bike as a teenager from Kaukauna to Combined Locks daily in the summer months.
With visions of racing top notch, late model stock cars on the tar, KK Sports Arena was paved in March, 1968. “They built that track as sort of a mini version of Daytona International Speedway,” said Van Daalwyk. The facility’s new paved half-mile track had a surrounding four-foot high concrete wall , twelve-foot high banks, caution lights on the corners, painted lanes, and a “double-kiss” rail on the inside. The track featured seventy foot wide curves and sixty-five foot wide straightaways. The new model stock cars would be the showcase and speeds in the range of 110 to 120 miles per hour on the straightaway and an average 85-90 miles per hour overall were expected.
There was permanent seating for 11,000 fans in the grandstand and room for perhaps 14,000 more on surrounding hillsides for the quarter-mile and half-mile events, while the bleachers along the drag strip held around 8,500 and hillsides that could accommodate 12,000 to 15,000 overall.
The first event was a USAC race on June 2. “The place was a sellout. There was no fencing back then. Back then you bought your tickets down in the entrance way. You just bought your ticket and walked in. It was sort of like a drive in movie theatre at the time.”
In 1969 when Joe Van Daalwyk bought Great Lakes Dragaway in Union, Grove, Wisconsin near the Wisconsin/Illinois border Roger Van Daalwyk would travel down there to work for his Dad on the bigger drag race weekends.
“Between 1966 and 1969 KK Sports Arena was doing good and holding its own,” said Van Daalwyk. “In 1970 it was a season of a lot of rain and KK Sports Arena went under.” It was at that time Joe Van Daalwyk bought the struggling track back from DeLuew and it was renamed Wisconsin International Raceway the following year.
Local Ted Schmalz was named the track’s general manager. Roger’s brother Pat Van Daalwyk along with Dave Lindemuth all worked at the track under the new Wisconsin International Raceway banner.
Roger Van Daalwyk worked on the safety crew on the half mile. Halfway through the 1972 season, just weeks after he graduated high school, Schmalz was let go from his GM duties and Roger Van Daalwyk became the general manager of WIR at 18 years old.
In 1972 the USAC stock car series had grown to become a pretty expensive date for track promoters. “Eventually Dad had grown tired of the USAC boys and their demands,” said Van Daalwyk. “That’s when Dad hired Gary Vercauteren to handle public relations and marketing for the track.”
And thus, the Red, White and Blue state championship series was formed. “Gary was very, very good at what he did,” said Van Daalwyk. “He really went to bat for the track.”
Van Daalwyk ran a heavy rotation of ads on local radio stations, including WKAU 105 FM. “I wrote the copy for those radio ads,” said Van Daalwyk. Among the catch lines in the ads where phrases like “just a burnout south of highway 55 in Kaukauna” or “Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!!” to promote the Red, White and Blue series races.
They’d purchase large ads frequently in local papers like the Appleton Post Crescent, the Kaukauna Times and racing trade publications like Midwest Racing News and Checkered Flag Racing News. “Those ads were real effective back in those days before social media and that stuff,” said Van Daalwyk.
When the 1980’s rolled around Joe Van Daalwyk eventually sold his construction company, which built WIR and went north and built a 14 cottage resort in Lake Tomahawk. “Dad came home from Lake Tomahawk before the White race in 1983 when he told me he had cancer,” said Van Daalwyk. “I was shocked. It was race day. We’re sitting on the back steps. For all those years growing up I’d always have to knock on the door of his office to talk to him at night. He was always busy. But that day he insisted that he talk to me right away. He died at 62 years old. My plan was I was going to continue to run the track for him as the owner. But he passed away after Christmas that year.”
Joe Van Daalwyk had a reputation as a tireless worker, who expected and demanded nothing but the best. “Dad would tell you what to do – and show you how to do it,” said Van Daalwyk. “And there was only one way to do it, and that was the right way. He told me there was no such thing as saying no. Anything can be done if you put your mind to it.”
In the final years leading up to his death Joe Van Daalwyk acted as a consultant to Roger in the day to day operations of the track. “We’d have meetings almost daily to cover every detail to make sure things were done right,” said Van Daalwyk. “We are actually busier at this game in the winter time. You aren’t necessarily as busy at the track per se. But the meetings to go over the track schedule, payout and tracking down sponsors goes on all winter long.”
Van Daalwyk leased WIR from 1984 to 1988 from the family trust that had been setup. “Dad had it in his will that I was either going to buy it or it was going to be sold. Nobody else in the family wanted to run it,” said Van Daalwyk. “I couldn’t have made that decision without consulting with my good friends John and Sue McKarns.”
McKarns had owned the ARTGO Challenge series, which hosted special late model events all across the Midwest, including WIR. “We were down in Florida at the RPM workshops and was I was leasing the track and sub leasing it to John for those ARTGO shows,” recalled Van Daalwyk. “After we were done in the workshops all day, we found a room and the three of us talked about it. By 9:30 p.m. that night John had convinced me to buy WIR.”
Over the years the ARTGO Challenge series was a mutual “win-win” deal for both ARTGO and WIR. WIR almost served as an “anchor track” of sorts for the series.
Its annual events continued there with ARTGO. The advice John McKarns would give Van Daalwyk would come full circle many years later. “We were at a promoters meeting over in Lacrosse in 2014 and Gregg (McKarns, John’s son) was there,” said Van Daalwyk. “I had convinced Gregg to purchase Madison (International Speedway). Gregg was on the fence, but after I talked with him, and reminded him that he had grown up with the sport, and that I had all the confidence in the world in him. He wound up buying the track.”
Fox River Racing Club leases the track for Thursday night Thunder races. Prior to 1974 the Wolf River Racing Association (WRRA) ran the program on the quarter mile, with only Red, White and Blue races on the half mile. “I’ve always worked well with the club to provide affordable, family entertainment on Thursday nights,” said Van Daalwyk. “Dave Valentyne, Rene Grode, Ray Dietzen and Bob Bennett are among some of the guys who ran the club in the past that are still around to this day. “
With the ARTGO specials that were run at WIR, Van Daalwyk got to know many of those drivers well over the years. Here’s his take on a few of them:
Mark Martin. “A very classy dude. I remember being down at the Wisconsin Fans for Auto Racing banquet in Milwaukee. Mark was there with his son Matt, who was just a baby at the time. He was swimming with him in the pool. Just having fun. A very down to earth guy. One time when Gary Vercauteren drove Mark into the track for the first time Mark looked down and said “Oooohhhh Weeee this track is gonna be fun!”
Alan Kulwicki. “Alan was all business. He never stopped working on that race car when he was at the track. He was a perfectionist. The car had to be perfect every time.” It was not uncommon for Kulwicki to still be checking things like tire pressures and such while most other drivers had already popped open their coolers and had their race cars already loaded.
Rusty Wallace. “Super nice guy. He just loved racing. Heck I remember Rusty Wallace would come and be a spectator here a few times to watch his brother Kenny race. I looked over in the stands and here’s Rusty eating bratwursts and drinking Miller Lite as a fan in the stands here. He just came unannounced. That was pretty cool.”
Matt Kenseth. “You just knew he was gonna go big. In fact my brother-in-law Brendan always told Matt to remember where he came from when he hit it big in Cup racing. Matt would just laugh. We’d leave the pits and go to the Pit Stop Bar and Grill. After the races he’d always have our pizzas. He loved those pizzas. I thought he’d be really, really good but I didn’t know he’d get that big that fast.”
Dick Trickle. “Some of the stuff with Trickle was over exaggerated with the drinking and stuff to be honest with you. But I’ll say this. There was nobody better and dealing with the fans than Dick Trickle. He was the best, hands down. He’d stay late after the races until every last fan had left the track, signing autographs. He was always the last hauler out of the parking lot. Then, after the fans would leave he’d say “ok, now it’s time to have a couple of beers. He’d pull his hauler up behind the stands. We’d go sit up in the press box where I still had some cold beer up there. We’d go up there and solve all the world’s problems in racing. He was just a genuine guy. Up until the last time I talked to him he was still a staunch supporter of the 9:1 compression rule for motors. We’d argue and I’d tell him that motor that once cost $4,000 now cost close to $40,000.”
Despite all of Trickle’s success – he still always minded his Mother. “I remember one day Dick was signing autographs and his Mom was in the motorhome and was cooking food for us,” said Van Daalwyk. “She told me to tell Richard he had to come in immediately after he signed autographs he came in as instructed and ate chili before he went out and partied after the fans had left. He always respected his Mother.”
During one ARTGO show in the mid 1980’s the track received a massive downpour in a very short amount of time. Race mid 80’s. It rained a couple of inches in an hour. Guys were jumping off the guardrail swimming. Tires were floating around. “That night Dale Earnhardt was scheduled to race that day but it rained and we ended up rescheduling,” said Van Daalwyk. “But Earnhardt’s car owner Richard Childress popped in behind our concession stand. He was a real modest, unassuming guy. He was standing there by himself – basically just trying to get out of the rain. He grabbed some food and we chatted for quite a bit. He was a real nice guy.”
The game of marketing and advertising for WIR has changed drastically since the early 1970’s. “Social media might help but it doesn’t get to everybody,” said Van Daalwyk. “One thing it is doing is taking away from our local newspapers. We used to take out big display type ads in the local papers and the racing trade papers. It listed everything we had going on with pictures in them, too. People could hang onto that and remember the date. We don’t have much of that anymore. And social media is partly to blame for that. A lot of people are listening to Sirius radio because they don’t want to listen to commercials. I still buy a good amount of radio ads. Am I still reaching everybody? I don’t know. We’re trying to do a little bit of everything. Television was way too expensive. The price of that has come down. If you don’t have the right footage it doesn’t even pay to run ads.”
What has been Van Daalwyk’s biggest headache in running the race track over the years? Without hesitation Van Daalwyk said “The weather. My Dad told me to quit worrying about the weather. You can’t change it. “I told him “you worry about it?” He said “not anymore. That’s why I have ulcers now.” You can’t change it anyhow. That by far is the biggest problem we face on race day.”
When asked about the biggest success story with WIR Van Daalwyk said the annual Eve of Destruction events held every September. “On most Thursday nights I can look in the stands where somebody is for the stock car races they sit in the same place pretty much every week. On the night of the Eve I can’t do that. 90 percent of those fans are non- race fans and they just want to see stuff get wrecked. The crowds are huge and bigger than I could have ever imagined.”
With a new high school and high scale housing creeping near the race track in the 2000’s, noise complaints have popped up from time to time. “I get calls sometimes,” said Van Daalwyk. “We do everything we can to get the races done earlier, preferably by 10:00 p.m. We used to start every night at 8 p.m. Now we start at 6:45 p.m. We do try to keep the neighbors happy I guess.”
“WIR is about family. We’ve got over 100 part time people working on any given race night – some of whom have been with us for over 35 years. There are kids and even folks grandkids work here. WIR would not be where it is today without the dedication of the friends and family that work here. They sacrifice a lot of their time all season long. WIR is their track.”
Van Daalwyk plans on continuing as the owner/operator of WIR until the completion of the 2017 racing season. “I plan on selling the track to my son Dan and his wife Ginger,” said Van Daalwyk. “Dan grew up around this and this way we’ll be able to keep the Van Daalwyk tradition of running WIR long into the future.”
Van Daalwyk plans on spending more time at his cottage up north and on his pontoon boat.