Young claims first Miss-N-Out title

The Cutters’ Eric Young rode through the crowd, being patted on the back and congratulated for his finish in Miss-N-Out. He finally stopped when he got to his coach. Jim Kirkham smiled.

“I got it,” Young said with a laugh. “Finally. Check it off the list.”

The Little 500 list for Young really only had one thing left — winning Miss-N-Out.
As a sophomore, Young placed second in the event. As a junior, his bike had mechanical problems.

When the final lap of Saturday’s Spring Series event started, the senior was sitting on the back wheel of Phi Delta Theta rider Steve Sharp, the defending Miss-N-Out title holder.

They pedaled through turn one and two before meeting a wall of wind on the backstretch. That’s when Young made his move.

“I knew it was going to be windy — it would be hard to accelerate there, so that’s where I was going to accelerate,” Young said.

He pulled two bike lengths ahead of Sharp before turn three.

As he came close to the finish line, Young didn’t rotate his pedals.

“I just coasted,” the Cutters veteran said. “I looked back and they were kinda ... back, so I figured I’d kind of shut ’er down.”

All that remains on Young’s senior Little 500 checklist is winning the white jersey (awarded to the team with the most points) and a third-straight Little 500 championship, which would be the fifth-straight for the Cutters’ team. As for Saturday, he was more congratulatory of his team than celebratory of his own success.

“We had Kevin (Depasse) get into the semifinals and that was his first time doing the event so that’s pretty rare,” Young said. “Then Hank (Zach Lusk) made the finals and he’s never made the finals before so that was very cool.”

The Fourth Man Out
Sigma Chi’s Adam Fish thought he had it by a wheel.

It was the final heat and he only had to survive one more lap before the neutral lap. When the pack crossed the start/finish line he knew it was close between him and Black Key Bulls veteran Jordan Bailey.

“I was surprised and a little disappointed,” Fish said. “I wasn’t disappointed with the results, but that a close call was the thing that knocked me out.”

Fish said he was knocked out by Sharp, Young and Bailey.

“Overall, Jordan was really strong and I was with him in the two previous heats,” Fish said. “When you’re in the race, you have tunnel vision. It’s hard to really know what’s going on around you. I knew it was close, but I understand there had been close calls all day.”

As for the rest of the day, Fish and his Sigma Chi team had three riders in the final 16.

“We would have liked to have had all three in the finals,” Fish said. “But it’s not the race; it’s just Miss-N-Out and we’ll have another chance to compete on race day.”