The Instructor's School weekend was a resounding success!

[David Bassett]

After a great Friday night Instructors banquet sponsored by Bert Smith Porsche, Saturday dawned with much anticipated, and long overdue delightfully cool weather. Having groaned loudly at the banquet when informed that we would need to register, then start promptly at 7:30, all attendees responded with enthusiasm when it came time to start. 9 1/2 hours later we all had teched cars, walked the track ( OK, we rode between corners then got out and talked about how to take each corner), had lots of track time, fulfilled our classroom and written testing obligation for national certification, and modeled, practiced, then tested instructor candidates abilities to teach Drivers Education. We wound up with 17 new, but highly competent and well qualified Instructors. My congratulations again to our new Instructors. It was a very busy and full day, and I want to thank everyone who participated for their cooperation in getting it all accomplished. We have the very best Instructors in the country, and it is they who make our DE program so successful. Thank you for all you do . And thanks again to Bert Smith for footing the entire bill for our Instructor's Banquet and providing great door prizes to boot.

We capped of a great day with a fine dinner again at the Inn on the Lake for those who wished to attend. Reeves Import Motorcars was there with some great door prizes to delight those with the winning numbers.

Sunday was a standard Drivers Education, open to all classes of drivers. I want to take a moment to apologize to any Beginner or Intermediate drivers who thought that the entire weekend was open only to Instructors or Solo drivers. An unfortunate choice of words in our Profile may have caused that. We will endeavor to ensure that we have complete clarity in the future.

With near perfect weather, we responded with a near perfect DE, finishing on time with a minimum of problems or delays, and a maximum of grins on the faces of students, especially those who attended for the first time.

There is not enough space in this post to mention everyone who pitched in to make our weekend a success, but I want to mention a few key people while thanking all. Our long suffering and hard working Registrar, Amy Gustafson, my second in command John Opphile, our Tech head Carlos Debonis, the omnipresent and ever willing Dave Cook, Page Obenshain who manned the black flag station most of the weekend, and all you Instructors who cheerfully pitched in all weekend.. I especially want to again thank Bert Smith for providing both the dinner, and the door prizes Friday night, and Reeves who made sure that we had a ready supply of cold bottled water at start finish all weekend, and the door prizes Saturday night.

Our next DE is less than a month away on December 12&13. This will be the last time for a Suncoast DE till next spring, and the weather should be great. Registration is open, or will be shortly on Clubregistration.net. Don't miss the last chance for a track fix this year!