Martinsville Bulletin, Inc.
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Martinsville, Virginia 24115
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Sunday, October 19, 2008
By HOLLY KOZELSKY - Bulletin Accent Editor
At first glance, it may surprise people to see Amanda Cole working on race cars. After all, she is the only woman in the motorsports program at Patrick Henry Community College (PHCC).
She’s just following in the family footsteps, though.
Cole was looking through the course catalog, undecided about a program of study but knowing she wanted to go back to school. Suddenly, the motorsports section caught her attention.
“My pawpaw used to race, my dad used to race,” she said: Why shouldn’t she try the field?
Her father is Billy Joe Cole and her grandfather is Thomas Cole, both of Rangeley. They used to race at the track at Oak Level.
Racing is not only about driving, she said.
“There’s just so much to do in this field. I just really want to be part of the pit crew, part of the team, travel, be on the inside and see how it really is,” she explained.
Having an education in racing would prepare her for a career, not just a job, Cole said. She expects to be finished with her studies in May.
However, it took some time for her to warm up to the idea of being in a male-dominated field.
“When I came in I was very scared because there’s not a lot of women” in racing, she said.
Plus, having a driver dad and grandpa didn’t necessarily guarantee her knowledge.
“A lot of these guys (in class) grew up in the garage. I didn’t,” she said.
Neither her gender nor her newness to racing proved to be an obstacle, she found.
“It’s amazing to me. The guys ... don’t pick on me, they don’t laugh at me. They’re just like, ‘you’re one of the guys now,’” she said.
The instructors “Denver (Smith), Talmadge (Thomas) and Lu (Larosa) have been so good teaching me and making sure I understand” that she has felt right at home in the school garage, she said. Her fellow students also help each other a great deal, she added.
What has been particularly interesting to her has been to see the difference in working on street cars and race cars. She said that while they work on race cars, the instructors explain how the work would be done differently on a street car. The fabrication (how a car is built) is much more similar between the two, she said; it’s with the engine that it differs greatly.
She said that she has enjoyed all aspects of her classes. “The more I learn, the more fascinated I am about doing it.”
Cole encouraged, “More chicks need to come over here. They would like it, they really would. Yeah, you do get greasy, you do get dirty — but it’s worth it.”
Her days are full. She goes to class during the day, and she works evenings at the Rangeley 102 convenience store in Rangeley, near her home on Dillons Fork Road.
School “is pretty much my main priority right now,” she said. The 26-year-old added, “I waited entirely too long to go back to school, and I realize that.”
What was supposed to be just a year off school after she graduated from Bassett High School in 2000 just kept going. The decision to go to college came to her from out of the blue one day, she said: The thought “‘I don’t want to be making hot dogs at $6.65 an hour for the rest of my life’” just hit her.
She decided to go back to school once she realized that “if I’m going to make something out of myself, I’m going to have to do it” myself, she said. She added that she’s lucky that she decided to go back to school while she is still single and without children because “nothing’s tying me down.” |
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