Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

WISC TV out of Wisconsin is reporting a fatality at Beaver Dam tonight at the IRA show. No names have been released but prayers to the family and friends. 

WISC TV reports it was a driver from Brookfield wisc.  & he was 47 years old. Very sad news for the sprint car racing community. thoghts and prayers go out to his family!!!

I see Bill Balog is from Brookfield,

He is not 47

Scott Semmelmann, 3X

Not balog but Scott semmelmann very sad deal rip 3x

Balog is only 34

Oh my.............God Speed to the family. Hearing about any loss is so hard to hear, but when it happens to a local, it's so much harder...RIP

Thats very sad.....prayers out to the family, freinds and crew

The older I get, the faster I used to be.

Thoughts and prayers to his family and loved ones. Very sad.

What is sickening is that it is a headline on espn.com right now written by the assiociated press. The headline reads sprint car driver dies at Wisconson track and the last couple sentences of the article are about the Tony Stewart Kevin Ward situation. Why not report some of the good things that happen in sprint car racing instead or reporting only the tragedies? Seems very one sided and untasteful to turn a trageic event like this to draw attention to another tragic event that are not even linked together except that they happened in a sprint car.

R.I.P. Scott Semmelmann. Condolences to the family and friends, the racing community will morn your loss.

Agreed Nick14. The MSM seems to have a need to attach Tony's name to everything Sprint Car, or at least they have for the last couple of years, and it is very rarely positive.

ABC ran a story about Scott roughly an hour or so ago and did the same thing at the end of their piece. They brought up the Ward thing. 

Never hit stationary objects!

I think it is just SICK JOURNALISM that these BUFFOONS link these two NON RELATED stories together.  It is jut sickening.....

The national media's motivation is to get clicks on their websites and viewers on their television broadcasts to satisfy sponsors.  Reporters today are motivated not by gathering and reporting the news in an unbiased manner as much as pleasing staff cutting happy management by garnering the most clicks and views.  If a headline is sensational and draws viewers albiet in a cheesy fashion they have accomplished their objective. 

With that having been said my thoughts and prayers go out to everyone involved in this most recent Sprint Car racing accident. 

As racing fans we're going to be quick to jump on the media but all of that aside the sport suffered another loss in a trend that has become all too familiar.  The national media is going to jump on anything they can that involves Sprint Cars at this point, we know that.  Reading between the lines they're sending the message to the non-race-fan masses that Sprint Cars are lethal.  I think the conversation that is going to eventually have to take place is what can be done to lessen the frequency of these kinds of incidents in the future.  The sport will never be 100% safe but it would be great if these kinds of things weren't appearing in the national press every couple of months.

I remember one time back around 1960 in the pre roll cage days there was a double fatality at our State Fair.  It was all over the newspaper the next day but the races went on and people just shrugged it off as something that happens in racing.  The world wasn't as politically correct and news like this didn't spread across the entire inhabited earth within seconds of an accident.  If a person didn't live in St. Paul, Minnesota, and hadn't picked up the Pioneer Press they probably never even knew that it happened.  Things are different today, news travels in real time and sports that produce tragic accidents on a regular basis are not shrugged off by the public like they were decades ago.

Apparently this happened during hot laps on a 3/8 mile and I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around that.  Hot laps on a 3/8 mile are generally a routine part of the program that comes off without incident.  3/8 mile tracks can tear up some equipment but generally are not associated with these kinds of headlines.  I'm saddened by this on a lot of levels as I'm sure everyone else is. 

Stan Meissner

RIP Scott Semmelman.

I agree with the comments about the poor jounalism and reporting today. The reporters don't have a clue about sprint car racing and they have to resort to negativity and tie non-related stories together to make a headline. It is very sad.

The racing media has to do a much better job of making sure it is keeping positive news about the sport in front of the public. Last week Fremont Speedway held several different venues to raise money for the Jeff Gordon's Children's Foundation. Several teams participated in kick ball games for Kick Childhood Cancer. There were auctions, raffles and many other fundraisers that day. Through an outstanding effort by event organizer Shelly Liskai,  over $50,000 was raised which will be matched by the Gordon foundation.

I bet none of you were even aware that the family of promoters, drivers, owners and fans have hearts of gold and do great things with efforts such as these. Why? ESPN and other media outlets don't report the positives. Maybe more effort by each track's public relations person can help that.

I took the Aircraft Accident Invistigation Course at the Transportation Safety Institute and one day of the course was dealing with the media, with a real on location media broadcast crew teaching the class. There is a saying that we were taught to be prepared for and as sad as it sounds, "If it bleeds, it leads".... 

Member of this message board since 1997

I am soorry to hear of a loss in the racing community .

prayers to his Family, Friends and Fans

Was in the stands at Beaver Dam last night. It was the second group of hot laps. The track was a little slick yet, but it was smooth and looked like it was gonna be a great surface to run on. Going into turn 3, Scott made slight contact with another car and got his car sent towards the cushion. The car started to roll and the wing came loose from the car right away and his car landed cage first on top of the concrete wall. Soon after that, it was apparent that things were not well, and around 730pm they made the announcement that the races were cancelled. It was a very quiet and somber atmosphere, to say the least. 

It's a very sad situation, but thought posting on here as someone that was at the track, could help clear up any specualtion about what may, or may not have happened. Nobody is at fault for what happened, it just happened. 

It's not fair to Scott, his family, the IRA, and sprint car racing as a whole, that the Tony Stewart situation is getting mentioned in this conversation, but we can't control that.  All we can do as sprint car fans is show love and support to everyone involved in these most unfortunate of times.

RIP 3X  

"They'll learn." 

Thank you for posting this.   It is always good to hear first hand information of what has happened.  

While we may not like the media treatment that we are recieving, it is part of the world that we currently live in.

I lived in Wisconsin from April 2008 to May 2009, and for the year that I lived in Wisconsin, I went to many IRA shows including most of the shows at Beaver Dam.   Thus, I was trying to remember if I had seen the 3x car during my time.   I did a search a Google search on Scott's name and the first 3 plus pages were all dedicated to his death.   It seems that almost every major newspaper in every town had a story on his death.   When I did a Google Image search,  the first picture of a sprint car was a picture of Kevin Ward.   I finally was able to find a picutre of the 3x.  

Very sad time indeed for Scott's family, the IRA, Beaver Dam, and sprint car fans everywhere.   This may be the first time in a long time that I am looking forward to the winter.

Jon

My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone involved.

These concrete surfaces need to be protected.  Cage first into concrete is bad enough (see Shane Hmeil's crash).  The top of a concrete wall (with 90 degree angles) is quite dangerous when a car lands on it.  Tires wrapped in a heavy rubber placed on top of a concrete wall would do wonders in preventing this sort of impact.  There are a number of other solutions.

I've been pretty adamant that track barrier design is the biggest safety issue we face.  I hope these tracks and sanctioning bodies can come together and commit the money needed to make the tracks safer.

Ben T

"If you're gonna run the bottom, you might as well get 
a real job."