Blog
NSORRA Volunteers Create Hare Scramble Awards
A grassroots organization promotes the involvement of its members to give what they can of their time, energy and skills. NSORRA members provide these resources generously.
A cornerstone of NSORRA member engagement is our popular hare scramble race series. These events take a tremendous amount of volunteer support from preparing and sweeping trail, to administration and organizational details, to the setup and teardown on race days.
Behind the scenes, there is one highlight that we’d like to recognize – the creation of our unique race podium awards.
Podium Prizes
Justin Lewis of Sydney Forks, Cape Breton, is not only a strong Intermediate A racer and a great trail volunteer, but he has also donated his time and talent to design and create our metal podium awards for the 2023 and 2024 scramble seasons as well as the year end awards in 2023. These trophies have been coveted by groups across Canada who have contacted the office to ask, “Who made your fantastic awards?”. A big shout out to Protocase Inc., Justin’s employer, for supporting Justin’s commitment to producing these distinctive awards.
This year, NSORRA’s Kathleen Tobin, from Howie Centre, Cape Breton, was chosen to represent Canada in the Women’s Club Class of the FIM International 6 Days of Enduro (ISDE) – Spain, which took place in October 2024. NSORRA’s Justin Lewis, Scott Sampson and Neil Jennings travelled with Kathleen to support her in this ultimate test.
Time Crunch for Awards Creation
Because Justin was away and not able to assist us with our 2024 year-end awards, we returned to our membership for help. We wanted to create something to carry on the tradition of our one-of-a-kind trophies. Time was against us.
Matthew Purdy stepped up and offered to make a brander from a NSORRA logo steel template provided by President Josh Kelly. Test trials of branding, getting the temperature consistent and the wood texture right, proved challenging.
A Production Team is Created!
Then, one of our enduro rider members, Justin MacNeil, owner of Cutting Edge Applied Technology in Burnside, offered his laser engraver for the second round of testing. Many thanks to Justin for his time in setting up the correct dimensions for the layout of this year’s plaques. Justin’s engraving machine worked overtime for a week, burning images onto aspen plywood blanks.
As production continued, Josh picked up these rectangle-shaped pieces for the next stage. Long-time member of the motorcycle racing community, Johnnie Clark, cut out number-plate-shaped plaques on his bandsaw. Josh, Johnnie and Race Director Dave Tobin, spent many hours sanding and treating the raw wood to bring these awards to their finished grade.
The morning of the awards event, Josh and Executive Director Claudine Laforce added the name plates to each of the handmade plaques that were presented at the Soles In Motion-NSORRA Hare Scramble Series Awards that afternoon.
Prized Plaques
We would like to thank Justin Lewis of Protocase Inc. - Sydney, Justin MacNeil of Cutting Edge Applied Technology (CEAT) and Johnnie Clark for access to their skills and equipment used to create our distinctive 2024 awards.
As always, we encourage you to support those who support NSORRA!
Published: December 2024
