PORT ANGELES — Sprint boat fans lined up a full hour and a half before gates opened at the Extreme Sports Park for the Super Bowl of sprint boat races on Saturday.
Extreme Sports Park co-owner Kelie Morrison estimated 9,500 people attended the race, which event organizers said was the park’s best-attended to date.
Morrison said she didn’t hear of any issues concerning traffic or parking from either attendees entering or leaving the park.
“I think everything flowed very nicely,’ Morrison said.
“We haven’t had any complaints.”
The Extreme Sports Park at 2917 W. Edgewood Drive in west Port Angeles played host to the U.S. Sprint Boat Association’s National Finals Championship, with boat drivers from across the U.S. and Canada competing to be the best of the best.
Last month, roughly 8,000 showed up to watch the sprint boats, which can reach speeds topping 100 mph, race against the clock.
Sprint boat fan Jerry Elders started attending boat races when the Extreme Sports Park introduced them last year.
He said he’s been to all the races there since that time, and Saturday’s event seemed the most well-attended of all of them.
Joyce Stroeher, one of the sellers at the Wicked Racing official merchandise booth, said sales have increased compared with last year, with T-shirts and sweatshirts still being the most popular items.
Katie Phillips, another seller at the same booth, agreed that sales have been brisk this year with event attendees visiting the booth as soon as they set up on Friday.
“Just trying to keep things in stock [was] an issue,” Phillips said.
Lloyd Sampson, owner of the Frozen Delight Hard Ice Cream truck, said sales started slowly Saturday morning but were likely to increase drastically once afternoon hit.
He reported as much when the opened at the event the day before.
Frozen Delight business at the sprint boat races has steadily increased since the truck opened up at the inaugural event last year, Sampson said.
Sampson’s business, which features ice cream hand-made on site, has also started attracting repeat customers, he added.
“This is our second time [at the races], and we love it,” Sampson said.
Sgt. Glen Roggenbuck, the Port Angeles Police Department incident commander for Saturday’s sprint boat race, arrived at the sports park at 7 a.m. to begin setting up the on-scene police response center.
The law enforcement contingent at Saturday’s race comprised three Port Angeles police officers, including Roggenbuck, one Clallam County sheriff’s deputy and two Border Patrol agents.
Roggenbuck said the Border Patrol agents, with training on all-terrain vehicles, were there to quickly traverse the uneven terrain of the park and surrounding land if the need arose.
“They’re able to get pretty much anywhere on the grounds that were are not,” Roggenbuck said.
Morrison said she did not hear of police having to deal with any problems during Saturday’s event.
At the last sprint boat race in August, Roggenbuck said police dealt with only one intoxicated individual in a crowd of about 8,000, a ratio Roggenbuck said was pretty good for an event that size.
“I would classify that as zero problems,” Roggenbuck said.
Historically, the biggest issue with the sprint boat races has been parking, but Roggenbuck said the Extreme Sports Park organizers devised an efficient plan this year and executed it effectively.
During last year’s race, traffic backed up on Edgewood Drive as attendees paid members of the Port Angeles High School cheerleading team to park before entering the grounds.
Organizers avoided this route this year with fees paid to the cheerleading team, which helped direct attendees to parking spaces, included in the ticket charges.
Event organizers “learned from that and made it better,” Roggenbuck said.
“We’ve got an excellent working relationship with Wicked Racing and the sports park.”
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Reporter Jeremy Schwartz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jschwartz@peninsuladailynews.com.
