INTERVIEW: IODA president Kelly Kuether outlines vision for sportsman short course

In any context, a party breaking away from another tends to be nasty and filled with drama. Motorsport is no exception, with the most infamous example being the CART/IRL split in the 1990s for which American open-wheel racing is still trying to recover from today.

While the formation of the International Off-Road Drivers Association is at a regional level in Wisconsin, its leadership was formerly heavily involved with the Short-course Off-road Drivers Association before rifts sparked their departure.

The Checkered Flag got to speak with IODA president Kelly Kuether a month before the nascent series’ season opener, during which he gave his side of what prompted the split, his goals for IODA, and the impact he hopes it will have on sportsman short course off-road racing in the region.

A Messy Divorce

SODA was founded in 2021 by Willie Freshour as a revival of the original Short-course Off-road Drivers Association, which was the discipline’s preeminent championship from the 1970s through 1990s. Freshour spoke with TCF in May 2022, during which he expressed plans of expanding the series across the country for grassroots racers. In September of that year, Kuether was named SODA Vice President.

However, despite Freshour’s optimism in May, various elements of SODA’s executive board including Kuether took issue with how the series was being run, and they left to form IODA two months later. Among the founding members were Jay and Paul Billmeyer, Missi Buechel, Rob DeGreef, Foyd Hartl, Kimberly Kuether, Alexander Mackowski, Milan Mazanec, and Mike “Moogie” Morgan.

While Freshour is also a driver, Kuether argued SODA was straying away from the final two letters of its name as the president’s actions proved unpopular with his colleagues.

“The biggest issues with the rift that there was with SODA, point blank, was people were being treated poorly,” said Kuether. “It was being run more like a dictatorship. It didn’t matter what drivers wanted, it didn’t matter what people thought, it was going to be the owner’s way or no way. It had gotten to the point where now that we have gotten further into the offseason and heading towards the new season that points champions weren’t being paid. None of that was done. Just overall bad leadership.

“We wanted it to become what it was supposed to be, which was a drivers’ association. Now we sit here today, drivers actually have a say, their opinions matter, they count. The other big thing that people were very unhappy about was the original SODA series back in the eighties and early nineties was actually a nonprofit, and people got very upset that it was set up as a LLC, and that all the money was being turned into his pocket while being represented as the old way that the series was run.”

Whether in politics or sports, leaving an existing group under bad terms generally leads to clashes between the two as the original faction attempts to undermine their new rival. In the weeks following IODA’s creation, SODA had reached out to IODA-bound class representatives urging them to return before ramping up with more aggressive rhetoric. SODA eventually contacted TCF days before this interview claiming IODA infringed on its trademarks among “other illegal activities” for which the possibility of a lawsuit was raised.

Upon raising this with Kuether, he did not disagree with the suggestion that it seemed to be sour grapes from an ugly split. In fact, Kuether revealed that although Freshour had acquired the rights to the original SODA’s identity and history, the new iteration is legally not the same organisation. For example, the first SODA was legally a corporation whereas Freshour’s is a limited liability company, a primarily American concept that is equivalent to a private company limited by shares (Ltd.) in the United Kingdom; LLCs are privately owned and whose owners are members—rather than shareholders—with financial liability fixed at a certain amount.

By contrast, IODA is a corporation that hopes to transition into a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organisation. Kuether registered a trademark for IODA in February.

“In some aspects, it is a messy divorce,” he concurred with TCF. “But the biggest thing is, after doing all our due diligence and our research and everything else, he has no trademarks. He has no copyrights. The last time anything was filed for copyright was in 1997 with the Short-course Off-road Drivers Association Incorporated, which was the original series. The trademark at that same time was what the federal government—the Trademark Commission, I believe it’s called—is what is called dead. There is no trademark left anymore. At this point, the only reason that we feel that this is happening is because of the fact that he has now lost his series.

“Many people have said it was the right idea, wrong person at the time. Do we know about the threat of legal action? Yes, we do. We have received his letters. We have spoken with lawyers. He is trying to use the past company to try and say he has this or has that, when in reality, they are two entirely different organisations. He didn’t purchase the old organisation of the SODA Incorporated. He is a Short-course Off-road Drivers Association LLC. So while he has some of the same name, he doesn’t share the entire business entity. He never purchased the old entity, so to speak.”

Although the split means Wisconsin sportsman short course racers will have duelling series, Kuether does not see SODA as a threat.

“To be honest with you, in my opinion, SODA’s no competition to us,” Kuether proclaimed. “SODA to me, like I said earlier, right idea, wrong person. To run a series, you can’t go and run a race and be the president or the owner of the series plus still race. With other series that is with another series that’s in the area, I won’t use the name, that’s exactly the situation it is. It’s looking out for his own race—it comes down to, he wanted a place to race.

“Here, I am not a race car owner, I’m not a driver. I am merely a person who has a passion and a love for the sport. I am not looking out for any one class or any one person. I am looking out for the sport as a whole or the series as a whole. I want to see the best show put on. I want to see the best results for all the drivers as the president, and in the same breath, we have a board that is made up of drivers that still have their input. We run everything with votes. Nothing by ‘This is just the way it’s going to be.’ Our meetings are open to anybody anytime, not just the board. We don’t hide anything, we don’t keep everything behind locked doors. Somebody has a question they can ask and we’ll answer it.

IODA’s Blueprint

“The core of IODA is it’s for the drivers, by the drivers, and it’s about kids and family. We do everything we can to keep politics out of it and just come back to the purest form of racing we can get.”

Kelly Kuether

While IODA is only a few months old and the inaugural season still another month away, Kuether has high ambitions for it. Unlike professional short course series such as Championship Off-Road and its predecessor TORC, IODA is intended to support amateur and aspiring competitors with smaller budgets or those who simply want to compete for fun outside of their day jobs.

“I think that our series is going to provide and show in the long run that we will be the premier series for the sportsman-type race,” he explained. “We are setting up ourselves to be in a position to continue to grow and to continue to cater to the sportsman. While we love the professionals and we love watching them, they’re welcome to come run with us little kids anytime they’d like, our big focus is being on the sportsmen. We want to make sure that for years to come, that this is very realistic and continue to have a growing plan, to continue to have places for kids to come in and race, for the people who maybe have done their time in the professionals and want to come back just to have fun on the weekend.

“We have people from five years old all the way up to seventy. Some of them do race the pro series, some of them race the pro series their entire career. One of the gentlemen that we have racing with us has done the Mint 400. He’s done all the big desert races. He’s done all the races up here in Wisconsin in the early days, even through TORC and Champ and all of them, but has decided that he doesn’t want to continue to do the pro series, so he has come back down to the sportsman series and is teaching and showing the next level of racers the knowledge he’s earned over the years.”

Besides setting up the series to eventually become a nonprofit, IODA is also keen on making the sport as affordable as possible for competitors with input from them. For 2023, season-long memberships are worth $500 (€461.10) and comes with perks like access to campsites and voting rights at meetings; membership for a single weekend costs $150 (€138.31). Specific entry fees vary by class such as $200 (€184.46) for Pro Lite and Stock Truck while Single and Light Buggy entrants pay half of that.

Kuether’s gameplan assumes that contingency sponsors for each class would also increase prize money while allowing the series to keep entry fees at a reduced price. For example, Carter Trucking & Excavating is sponsoring Class 6 for two-wheel-drive sedans/SUVs, which charges $200 to take part but the company will provide $500 in payout.

“What we have done is we have put together a membership package that includes a big chunk of the normal costs with some discount to it, as well as the fact that we have kept our entry fees lower again by the decision of the drivers from the classes,” Kuether stated. “We have also done it now where you get a lot more seat time than you would in other series to make more bang for your buck. And then we want to also start increasing sponsorships for classes and so on and so forth to increase the payouts while keeping low entry fees.”

Much of Kuether’s pitches for IODA have centred around families. Like SODA, he does not see much interest in streaming races online in favour of encouraging drivers and their families to go to the races as it better cultivates interest in the sport. Younger generations are naturally seen as boons for a motorsport’s future, such as NASCAR providing free admission for children under the age of twelve for Xfinity and Craftsman Truck Series races.

“We’re trying to create a family environment, kind of that short track Saturday night field excitement,” Kuether said. “We get the families involved. The kids are down there, we have a programme put together just for the kids, we call it the Kids Club. They can come down and there’s activities for them, so we really want the family to be involved, not just looking at a monitor at home, watching the races. We want that interaction between fans and drivers and the little children and the kids to hopefully get these young kids interested to continue the sport for generations to come. Kind of our belief is if you don’t get them to the race track, you can’t get them interested and if you can’t get him interested, there’s nowhere for the sport to go. If a sport begins to die, there’s no new generation calm enough to pick it up.”

The 2023 Season

The inaugural season will take place across five rounds, all of which are at Gravity Park USA. SODA had done the same for its first year in 2021, originally beginning with a three-race series before expanding into a full-fledged championship and diversifying the calendar for 2022 onwards. With IODA virtually assuming Gravity Park as a “home track” of sorts, it will not host any SODA races in 2023.

“We were familiar with Gravity Park obviously from another series. No matter what, I wanted to make sure that we could guarantee everybody a season,” Kuether began. “I didn’t want to be a one- or two-race show, and everybody that got together in the beginning, I said the same thing. So we started negotiating with Gravity Park with the thought process that as we move forward from here, we will continue to grow to other tracks. We will be adding more races.

“Gravity Park will be kind of our home track, if you’d call it that. It’s a nice facility. Lots of room. The owner is good to work with, he’s kind of still that old school honest man, and he’s been a pleasure to work with to this point and we look forward to many years to come with not only that track but a lot of other tracks in the state here.”

While Chilton, Wisconsin, will be the only town to host IODA for 2023, Kuether is eyeing other tracks in the area currently used by Championship Off-Road such as Bark River International Raceway. This is especially imperative amid rumours of COR being purchased and expanding outside the Midwest, the latter of which seems to already be in motion as its 2023 season will end in Oklahoma at MidAmerica Outdoors. COR’s sportsman categories are not following the professional classes to Oklahoma, an unsurprising decision due to aforementioned costs and the monetary gap between sportsman and pro, meaning all six of the former’s rounds remain in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

“We’re waiting to hear a lot more as to what is happening with Champ. We’re under the impression and hearing stuff through the lines that there’s been an offer to purchase Champ and that they may be moving away, where they may only come back in this area for a few races,” commented Kuether. “So that’s kind of where we’re positioning ourselves to try and step up into that spot where we can make sure that all of those sportsmen do have a place to race at different tracks that they may be used to.

“I would like to get to the point where I see us running probably in the neighbourhood of ten races a year scattered throughout Wisconsin and into Michigan. I don’t know if we’ll ever get over to the Minnesota side of it, over like ERX or anything like that, but I continue to see us growing and continuing to make the series better and better, more investments into making the series better, make it better for the drivers, better payouts, and continuing to build it, not just for the drivers but with the drivers.”

With the season opener scheduled for 29/30 April still a month away, the president has noted entries are “starting to look good. They’re starting to pick up rapidly.” Various drivers from SODA have also defected to IODA, further filling the grid. As of this article’s publication, there are sixteen car classes plus two for ATVs.

“Preliminary numbers as we’ve been doing our talking with people, we think right now our opening weekend, we are probably going to be somewhere, plus or minus a hundred cars, maybe a little bit more,” Kuether continued. “We have picked up a lot of new classes that weren’t really opened in the other series that’s around here. We picked up some UTVs, we picked up stock trucks now.

“Basically, we have made a home for everybody.”

Interview audio on YouTube