A senior at Cabot High School has adapted a generous method of helping others. She has made use of her considerable skills as a dirt-track car racer to contribute more than $10,000 of her race winnings to support national and local causes that are important to her.
Rebekah Harris has given $4,000 to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, $3,000 to breast cancer research and more than $3,000 to the Cabot School District’s PALS, Partners in Active Learning, a national FFA program.
“FFA is a big part of my life, and I love kids,” Harris said. “In the PALS program, you see just how much kids really need stuff.”
According to the National FFA Organization PALS website, “PALS is a mentoring program that matches FFA members with elementary and middle school students. PALS mentors teach young students about the science and business of agriculture. They also serve as positive role models, helping their mentees learn to set goals and build positive self-esteem.”
Harris’ donations were possible because of her driving skill in dirt-track car racing, which she has participated in for four years. She has persevered in the sport, even after having several collisions.
“One time I went up the concrete barrier when another driver hit me,” Harris said. “I spun around, and my car literally drove up the wall, landing on the driver’s side. I’ve never rolled a car, never caught one on fire, but that was the scariest thing that has ever happened to me.”
Her determination and courage for the sport were not there in the beginning. Harris said that beginning at age 9, she went with her family to the dirt track and was terrified by the racing scene.
“I wanted nothing to do with it,” she said.
In those days, her older brother excelled at Motocross and scored fourth in a state competition. Before racing cars, Harris tried Motocross, too, she said.
“I was scared of motorcycles. I wasn’t good at Motocross and hated the corners,” she said. “I didn’t think I would be any good at racing cars, but it turned out I was a lot better with cars than with motorcycles.”
Harris overcame her initial fears by age 13 and begin competing in the all-female Powder Puff category, but she discovered that racing Powder Puff was not helping her develop her skills.
“I was racing with female drivers who had 10 years of experience behind the wheel, and I just wasn’t getting anywhere,” she said.
Harris moved over to racing with the boys, and within a year, she had won her first race.
Harris’ parents, Michelle and Jerry Harris, surprised Rebekah with her own race car several years ago. Her dad, who is a truck driver, announced he was going on the road. She woke up the next morning to find a race car in the driveway, she said.
“It still had the name of the former driver written along the bottom. They said it was for my brother. I was so mad! Then they told me it was really for me,” Rebekah Harris said.
“They have put a lot of money into it for me. I can’t tell you how many motors I’ve blown,” Harris said. “Last year, at the track at Plumerville, I blew out a motor, then another. By the end of the season, there were three motors I had blown, but it’s not uncommon. Drivers blow out motors all the time.”
Her dad has many years’ experience racing cars on the local dirt tracks. He remains her major support in the racing world, she said. He told her, “Friends off the track, but the second you step onto the track, you ain’t friends no more.”
Other than giving her advice and encouragement, he has also put her races ahead of his own competitions, Harris said.
“Some nights my dad didn’t race his car because he was too involved getting mine in shape,” she said.
A year after surprising her with her first race car, her parents bought her another car, then later purchased the car that Harris drives now, which is emblazoned with her favorite insignia, the FFA symbol.
Harris talked about the challenges of racing, especially of being a female who competes with male drivers.
“It is definitely harder being one of the only girls on the track. Sure, girls run in the Powder Puff, but there are not many girls running in the Classic,” Harris said. “It’s hard when you’ve got 30- or 40 year-old men racing against a 17-year-old girl. Some don’t even know I’m a girl until I get out of the car, especially when I go to a new track where they don’t know me. They say, ‘Oh my god, that’s a girl!’ But I keep up with them.”
If there is a particular situation on the track when she feels pressure, it is “in traffic,” Harris said.
“That is probably my biggest fear right now,” she said. “I haven’t completely gotten over it. Some drivers know that traffic is a problem for me. They will gang up, try to get me to back out, but they know I am not going to.
“You must hold your line when you race. You find a line, and you don’t change it because that is when wrecks happen.”
She then offered up a gritty saying in the sport: “Racin’s rubbin’.”
Competing with male drivers who don’t want a woman in the race can be tricky, and there has been one direct attack on her on the track, she said.
“I had a pretty bad wreck. I had spun out higher up on the track, and one driver drove from the bottom of the track, raced up to the top to hit me, and he T-boned my car on purpose,” she said. “He tried to wreck my car to the point that I couldn’t race, but I did still race that night.”
There have been times when she just didn’t want to race anymore, “because you get so much hate from people who just don’t understand,” she said.
“They think, ‘This is a male sport, and you don’t belong here.’ But I do belong here, and this is where I am staying,” Harris said.
In response to these challenges, Harris has developed her own method of preparing for a race.
“I usually just sit in my car during several races before my own,” she said. “I pray every time before I go on the track. I am quiet. I don’t want people coming up and talking to me. If I have a friend there, she stands right next to me, but we don’t talk much. It is how I get into my zone and get focused.”
Harris said she has many more supporters than nonsupporters and has received generous advice from seasoned Modified driver Randy Weaver, who noticed Harris was driving with one foot only.
“In racing, you have to drive with both feet. Every time Randy recognized my problem, he offered supportive advice. He is an extremely talented Modified driver,” she said.
“I am still working on it, and I am getting there,” Harris said.
In August, Harris said she will attend Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia because the school is progressive in agriculture science. She has been most influenced by Christy Williams, who teaches agriculture science at Cabot High School and runs the PALS program in the Cabot Public School System, Harris said.
“Ms. Christy Williams is my favorite teacher in the entire world,” Harris said. “She is one of the biggest influences I have had.”
Harris wants to earn a bachelor’s degree in education and gain additional certification in the field of agriculture in order to teach agriculture science in the Arkansas school system.
Harris said she is definitely not going off to college to leave racing behind and that she wants racing to always be a part of her life.