Despite an increase in temperature for the 42nd annual demolition derby Saturday night at the Marion County Fair, attendance may have increased as well.
?I think (attendance) was at least as good, if not better (than last year),??said Myron Regier, fair board president. ?We haven?t got any final numbers in yet, but looking at the stands, most of the board members were kind of in agreement it looked better than last year.?
New this year was the addition of Chad Markley of Markley Demolition, Inc. of Abilene, who provided inspection, officiating and announcing services.
?The word we got from all the people that participated was they really liked him, and so we?ll probably continue with that,??Regier said. ?Everybody was well-receptive of the change.?
Some car classifications had a few more cars this year, including the compact derby and Figure-8, Regier said.
Results of the demo derby were as follows: Jason Hamm won the modified main feature, followed by Weston Mizell (second), Phillip Terrell (third), Scott Schultz (fourth), Kent Boesker (fifth), Bill Foley (sixth), Jake Koehn (seventh), Kevin Tidwell (eighth) and Tyler Wilden (ninth).
The derby also included a Figure-8 race, won by Dean Suderman. Mike Brandt came in second and Lloyd Anderson third.
Junior Figure-8 winners were: Tristen Hett in first place, Zach Anderson in second and Dustin Plenert in third. In the compact derby, Blake Stringer claimed first place, followed by Brian Thiessen (second) and Zac Dvorak (third).
