Joey Payeur
She had to put her racing goals on hold for an extra year.
But that just made it even sweeter for Jyllian Westover when she finally entered the ranks of the stock car gladiators.
The 15-year-old Fort Frances resident recently completed her rookie season in the Street Stocks division at the Emo Speedway, joining Libby Wilson of Fort Frances as the only female drivers in the Borderland Racing Association.
Westover proved she wasn’t in over her head after making the leap from the local go-kart racing circuit, finishing fifth out of 16 drivers with 395 points while driving the bright yellow #41 car.
It just took a little longer to land from that leap than she first anticipated.
“I was supposed to start stock cars last year but we didn’t have a car ready for me,” noted Westover, also a veteran starting guard for the Muskie junior girls’ basketball team.
“We knew it was going to take some time and my dad was doing other stuff.”
That father in question is none other than six-time Street Stocks season champ Ron Westover, who also won the now-defunct Thunder Stocks division in 1995 and whose passion for racing was adopted wholeheartedly by both his daughter and son, Raice, who currently participates in go-kart racing in Emo.
When the time came to hunt down a stock car for his daughter, it was a matter of having to fit the car to the driver.
“Because I’m smaller, it took a while to find a seat that would work for me in the car,” the teen recalled.
“And the [seat] belts were the hardest things to adjust properly.”
Beginning the season still just 14 years old, Westover understandably was not the picture of peace and tranquility entering this new phase of her racing career.
“There was a lot of nervousness,” she confessed.
“Everyone you’re racing against is so much older and have so much more experience.
“You don’t realize how fast it is out there until you’re actually in the middle of it,” she added.
Westover cited the difficulty in judging the space between her own car and the ones closest by as her biggest challenge.
“You can’t see your nose cone so it’s tough to figure out how much room there is between you and the guy in front of you,” she remarked.
“But I got better at it as the season went on.”
Westover’s best results in the feature races this past season were a trio of fifth-place finishes—part of her collection of 21 top-10 performances in both heats and features combined.
But her favourite moment was an in-race moment rather than one at the end.
“It was when I made my first pass,” Westover beamed. “It showed me I belonged out there.
“It was going to take some time for me to reach that point that I could do that,” she admitted.
“I had to wait until I was ready.”
Westover could have been an easy target for other drivers in a sport known for its “good ol’ boys” reputation that doesn’t lend itself well to the acceptance of either young or female drivers.
But she was adamant she encountered only an environment of support and encouragement.
“Everyone was pretty good to me, helping me out if I didn’t understand something,” Westover noted.
“There was no negative reaction. I was told I was crazy a lot, though,” she chuckled.
Westover’s focus going into next season will be to improve her speed going in and out of the corners.
“That was something that was holding me back,” she acknowledged.
As for a possible move one day to the WISSOTA Modifieds or Midwest Modifieds, that’s the only component of racing where Westover is in no rush.
“I’m comfortable in the car I’m in now,” she stressed.
“The Modifieds are way too fast to be a starter car,” she added.
“I will work my way up to that in the future maybe.”
