During the last weekend of September, Rockford Speedway hosted its 42nd annual National Short Track Championships with three days of racing featuring 12 divisions of racing action.  
Sunday afternoon’s 200 lapper for super late models highlighted the weekend’s competiton at the high-banked .29167-mile paved oval, which celebrated its 60th year of racing this year.  Midget auto racing opened the speedway in 1948 and the rest is history.
Jeremy Lepak of Wausau, Wis., earned membership into an elite club on Sept. 30, as he joined the likes of the late Joe Shear, legendary Dick Trickle, Steve Carlson and Eddie Hoffman as the only drivers to win the annual super late model headliner more than once at the northern Illinois speed plant. Lepak wheeled Gerry Gunderman’s Ford Fusion to his second-consecutive NSTC victory.
“It’s unbelievable,” said the 29-year-old Lepak after his victory. “It’s just awesome. It was fun. We did a lot of beating and banging but that’s just short-track racing.”  
Rockford promoter, the late Hugh Deery came up with the idea to hold the first NSTC in the fall of 1966. Trickle, the Wisconsin short-track ace, ventured out of his home state for the first time and captured the inaugural 200 lapper ahead of Chicagoland stock-car champion Roy Martinelli. Trickle’s ’63 Ford had a one-lap lead on Martinelli’s ’64 Chevy at the checkered flag with Trickle collecting the winner’s share of the purse, which was paid to Trickle in $5 bills by Deery.  
 “I really do treasure that one in 1966,” commented Trickle years later. “There were a lot of behind-the-scenes things that went on there. Number one, I had never run outside my own backyard, you might say, which is the central Wisconsin area. I never ran somewhere except in my own little circuit, but I had won there. The first time I ever stepped out of the central Wisconsin area was to the Rockford Nationals in 1966.”
Winning three NSTC during his career, Trickle would win more than a 1,000 late model stock car feature races before turning his attention to NASCAR Cup competition where he garnered “rookie of the year” honors in 1989.
“Going down there, they had a lot racier cars, a lot better looking cars,” added Trickle. “They looked like they were advanced from us by about five or 10 years. I guess what I remember is that I didn’t feel like I belonged there because my car didn’t look the part.”
The first few races saw the likes of Wisconsin’s Marlin “Shoes” Walbeck (1967) and Chicagoland’s William “Whitey” Gerken (1968) win the annual Rockford battle, joining Trickle as early race winners. Deery, who died in 1984, continued to improve the event with the Deery family still in control of the speedway to this day. Deery’s widow, Jody, is still very active in the day-to-day operations of the speedway.
“We were one of the first ones to have a weekend special,” Jody Deery reminisced. “It was great to see all the drivers coming from all around, from different states, coming together. The best memory is how great it was, the first few races, bringing all these drivers together. We didn’t know if we could get it done or not.”
John McKarns’ ARTGO late model series sanctioned the NSTC event for a number of years. McKarns’ son, Gregg, is currently the speedway’s general manager.
“The first time I came here was 1969 when Ramo Stott won the race,” said John McKarns. “He had a Plymouth, I believe, and he ran up against the wall. I was just impressed. I never saw racing like that before at a quarter-mile track. That was pretty cool. The year (1997) that Joe Shear won was very special. We knew Joe was suffering from cancer and he had the front end of his car knocked off and still came back and won the race. The car kind of looked like a modified. That will probably be the one thing I remember for sure.”
Shear, who passed away in the spring of 1998, leads all former race winners with a total of eight NSTC victories. Shear won his first NSTC in 1972 and capped off his winning career with his storied ’97 win.  
Rockford’s National Short Track Championships has a rich racing tradition, and, hopefully, will continue to build on that tradition for years to come.