Dirt
Meet ‘The Boss’
Stephanie Long works behind
the scenes to organize chaos
By Bobby Bennett,
CompetitionPlus.com
22 | D r a g
I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
and the nitty-gritty, that’s me,” Long says. “So if
you’re looking on the website for THE F.O.A.T.
to buy tickets, you’re looking at work from me. If
you’re looking at racer’s jackets, you’re looking for
me. If you’re looking for the organization on the
track, if there ever is such a thing, that’s pretty
much in my hands.”
She might be headstrong in her approach, but
that’s not to say Long sometimes gets mentally
and physically beaten down from time to time.
“Actually at Lights Out, I finally said, I was ex-
hausted, I had much more on my plate this time
than normally because I retired from teaching so
I picked up a lot more,” Long explains. “I went to
my car to hide, and Donald didn’t know where I
was, and he was on the starting line, and he sent
me a text message, and he said, ‘Where are you?’.
I said, ‘I’m in the car hiding,’ and he said, ‘Well, I
need you on the starting line. They won’t listen
to me; they won’t get off.’
“I said, ‘Well, I guess you’re just going to have
to figure out how to be the boss. It was a priceless
moment; it really was.
“We had to call the race, I remember. We were
trying to figure out if we were going to run it
through Monday, which we did stay through
Monday and then we had to call it and I had to
sit there, and you know we split the money for
all the racers,” Long explains. “It was from that
moment on that the racers started calling me
‘The Boss’ and so it stuck with Donald. That’s
where it came from.”
For the record, the job title of “Boss” comes
with such essential duties as writing tech cards,
a chore she undertakes to let the racers to know
how much Duck X Productions cares.
“I wanted it to be that personalization,” Long
says. “I hand-write every package that I deliver
or mail out. It’s very personal to me to make sure
that these racers know that we care. That’s why
Issue 143
T
he scene looked every bit like an
elementary school teacher taking con-
trol of a rowdy playground.
She commenced to screaming orders,
pointing fingers and pushing along quickly con-
forming individuals. However, this wasn’t school
property, and these weren’t intimidated students
falling in line.
These were grown men, some tatted up with
an image of a pit bull. Some standing with gold
chains, muscles and the appearance of taking
no crap from anyone. Except, this time they
fell in line.
Stephanie Long was no longer an elementary
school teacher in this instance. She was a race
official at No Mercy 9, using the skills of gaining
order to clear a starting line full of people who
had no business being in the restricted area.
“It’s kind of funny because they listen to me
because they all call me the boss,” Long admits.
“It’s the teacher’s voice.
“I still laugh at that because the security guards
came up to me afterward, shook my hand, and
said, ‘We don’t know how you just did that, but
can you teach us?’
“My answer is, ‘It’s the teacher and mom’s voice.’
It really is. Because you’ve got to give them respect
to get respect. And so you give them a little bit.
Like in my classroom, one of the first things that I
always did in the opening week of school was, ‘OK,
I trust every single one of you, and I respect every
single one of you. Now I expect you to respect me
in the way that things need to be run. So once
you break that trust, or break that respect, then
we’re going to have problems.’ And so I feel that
same way with the spectators.”
Grown men having schoolyard flashbacks,
just another day in the life of “The Boss,” a nick-
name of the lady who handles all of the logistics
many take for granted at Duck X Productions
events, she’s not the wife of radial tire racing’s
pied piper, Donald Long. Donald Long happens
to be her husband.
Long is more like the one who responds with
the phrase, “Would you like to speak with the
man in charge or the woman who knows what
is going on?”
“You’re talking to her,” Long responds with a
smile. “And then I respond with I hope that I have
an answer for you, and if I don’t, I will get you one.”
In other words, she’s the one who makes stuff
happen if it needs to happen.
“I would never take anything away from Duck
because he’s obviously the primary starter of the
whole circus of events that we do, but when it
comes to the orchestration of all of the paperwork