PORT ANGELES — Outsized personalities have long been a hallmark of motor sports, and the American Sprint Boat Racing Association is no exception.
The high-spirited, bubbly disposition of Sequim’s Teri Cummings, the navigator of the TNT Jeepers Creepers No. 99 Modified Class boat driven by her stepson Dillon Cummings, stands out along pit road.
Her personality will be tested after the No. 99 boat failed to advance to the elimination round Saturday at Extreme Sports Park.
Teri Cummings said afterwards that she didn’t remember the last time the boat didn’t make it through qualifying.
A lunch lady at Grey Wolf Elementary and bookkeeper for the family contracting business, her enthusiasm and boosterism for the sport is infectious.
But it wasn’t always that way for Cummings, who has been racing sprint boats since 2008.
“We used to do a lot of quad riding and jet skiing,” Cummings said.
“And when we had the hydroplanes here [the former Strait Thunder races], Dillon was part of the group that jet skied across the Strait [of Juan de Fuca].”
She and her husband Tim were first tipped to the sport by Dan Morrison, now the owner of the Extreme Sports Park in Port Angeles and the driver of the Wicked Racing No. 10 Unlimited boat.
“Dan told us to come out and check out this clip from this sport of sprint boat racing,” Cummings said.
“Then we went down to watch a race in Woodland in 2007.
“We climbed to the top of the hill there to get a good view, and you could see the gleam [in Tim’s eye] the moment he laid eyes on the boats.”
That same day, Tim Cummings purchased a sprint boat, and the family had found a new outlet to indulge their need for speed.
“But then I said ‘What about me and Dillon?,’” Cummings said.
“We both wanted in.”
Soon after that, stepmom and stepson had their own boat, but Teri had major qualms before hopping aboard for her first ride.
“We were in Idaho for a race, I thought we were ready, and I told Tim I couldn’t do it,” she said.
“Dillon was only 16, so I had all these doubts in my mind.
“What if he can’t drive? What if he doesn’t know what he’s doing and we crash?”
The team used another navigator for that lap and came away unscathed.
“Before that first ride I was sick to my stomach,” Cummings said.
“But I went out for the next lap and every hair on my head stood up, I was so scared.
“But I just took that energy and told Dillon to go.
“Once you are going you don’t have time to be scared, the corners come up so fast — right, left, right, left — and its over before you know it.
“You barely have time to recognize what’s whizzing past you.”
The family worked to get the national association to change the age limit for drivers from 18 to 16, even though Teri’s sister, Tina Gahr, objected.
“My sister even voted against it,” Cummings said.
Tina Gahr makes up the other “T” in TNT Racing. She’s married to Paul Gahr Jr., the Sequim-based driver of the TNT No. 2 Live Wire in the 400 Class.
“We barely made it,” Cummings said of the vote.
“And two years later in 2010, he became the youngest driver to win a national championship.”
Cummings said she still gets nervous before a race, the first waves starting a couple of days before the event.
An anxious feeling overtakes her the night before racing, when drivers and navigators are given the course layout — and the task of memorizing 35 to 40 turns.
“I’m nervous right now,” Cummings said Thursday.
“You’ll see me out at the track the night before, walking in the dirt, walking in the sand around the course, looking like some kind of lunatic,” Cummings said.
“But I know that map by heart the next morning.
“Dillon will try and sit down somewhere, and usually by bedtime he’ll have it down.”
She said every navigator uses a different method to recall the serpentine nature of the course layouts.
“I memorize shapes,” Cummings said. “So then I know I’m going to do three figure eights, or go around the island two times in a circle.
“The track at St. John looks like a big-bosomed woman to me, so I know to go up around the thorax, down around the hips and out.”
Her method appears to work.
Cummings said she’s “only missed two turns since 2008.”
“I save him [Dillon] probably one or two times a race.”
Recent seasons haven’t been as fruitful for the team, but Cummings feels the best is to come.
“We’ve been one of the few boats using a smaller 7½-inch pump the last five years, and the number and quality of the competition has just shot up,” she said.
“So that makes Dillon have to flat-foot it to keep us in range with our times. He doesn’t slow down out there around the corners at all.”
A change to a new 8½-inch pump for this season has helped, but the team has been trying to find the right set of propeller blades to fit the new pump.
“We’re going to borrow some blades, and just flat foot it and see what happens,” Cummings said.
She said her husband also is busy working on an Unlimited Class boat.
“My dream is to have all three of us up at the top of the podium representing TNT Racing across all three classes,” Cummings said.
“I know we can get there.”
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Sports reporter Michael Carman can be contacted at 360-452-2345, ext. 5250 or at mcarman@peninsuladailynews.com.
