BY LARRY LAWRENCE
P114
CN
III ARCHIVES
The throttle stuck, and I hit a
tree where a sawed-off branch
opened up my leg. That took me
out for two months."
After years of trying, Kent
Howerton finally won in front of
the home crowd in the 1981 Lake
Whitney 250 National. His vic-
tory was a minor miracle. He'd
been admitted to the hospital
earlier that week with a bacterial
infection. Thanks to intravenous
antibiotics, he recovered well
enough by Sunday to race and
beat rivals, Hannah and Donnie
Hansen. It was a great week-
end for Team Suzuki, as Mark
Barnett won in the 125cc class
over Rick Johnson and Johnny
O'Mara.
It was a weekend of firsts at
the '82 edition of Lake Whitney.
Both Jeff Ward (125cc) and Don-
nie Hansen (250cc) scored their
first outdoor national wins.
It was a repeat of first-time
winners in '83 with Team Ka-
wasaki's Billy Liles winning the
250cc class and Yamaha's Ron
Lechien winning the 125s. That
year also marked the only time
all three classes ran together at
Lake Whitney. Broc Glover won
the 500cc class that day on his
factory Yamaha.
And that was it in terms of
nationals at Lake Whitney. The
track fell into disrepair and fell off
the radar. New owners improved
the facility and revived the track
in the 1990s, and it hosted major
amateur races, and an effort was
made to bring back a national
to the track in the 2000s, but
it never quite made the cut. By
2010 the track closed for good.
Today, a decade after closure,
remnants of the old track can
just be made out on Google
satellite images, but it appears
almost certain that racing will
never again return to the banks
of the Brazos, but for the de-
cade Lake Whitney hosted
nationals it earned its place in
history and will forever be a part
of the sport's lore. CN
Lake Whitney held Trans-AMA
races in its early days.
