BUCYRUS - Carl Easterday Jr. doesn't find himself in a sulky often.

In fact, Thursday marked just the 10th start in a harness race in his lifetime.

"It's fun to race at home like this, it's more exciting for everybody around here," Easterday said. "I don't really do this a lot."

He doesn't do it a lot because he's usually just a trainer. Easterday said he got into the harness racing world to keep up a family tradition, but didn't anticipate actually partaking in the races.

"My family, my wife's family, my dad, my great grandpa was in it, so just keeping it alive," Easterday said. "I'm not really built to drive, I'm a disadvantage. I try to have other guys drive for me.

"I should be more excited than I am, but you get immune to it because you race all of the time."

Since he normally is behind the scenes when it comes to harness racing, Easterday doesn't have to think like a racer most of the time. On Thursday evening, he explained what he thinks the toughest thing about being a racer is.

"You don't know what everybody else is going to do," Easterday said. "You might go into it with a plan, but it's like a fight. If somebody hits you in the nose, it changes the plan.

"The hardest part is strategizing your own race because then you have to worry about them."

In only his second official year of being a licensed trainer, Easterday has been around horses for a decade now.

As one of only two local trainers with horses at the fair, Easterday fielded a pair of horses and was in the sulky for both races.

His best showing came in the seventh race of the day, when he trotted his horse Cody Coy to a second place finish, just behind J Duke Sugg and his horse Star Dust.

Free throw contest

Wednesday afternoon fairgoers squared off to see who the best free throw shooter was in the county, winners hold bragging rights for an entire year.

The adults were up first this year after normally closing out the contest and that was enough to persuade Mike Stucky to give it a go for the first time since he was a kid.

He banked in nine-of-10 and walked away with a trophy and two liter bottle of root beer.

"It felt good, at my old age I've learned to bank them off," Stucky said. "I don't have a lot of pride, so if you bank them in, they go in, it doesn't matter how they go in."

It was a technique he said he developed since he has gotten older. Stucky joked he developed it after he started to "lose the touch I never had."

Stucky said he and his daughter Grace shoot free throws at home regularly and will have little contests similar to this one. Grace won her age group the past two years and since Mike got to go first, he said it put a little bit of extra pressure on her. 

"I told her 'you only have to make 10 out of 10 to beat your old man'," Stucky said.

Grace didn't win her age group this year, but she can definitely look forward to father-daughter free throw shooting contests at home for years to come.


Twitter: @Zachary_Holden

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