The Mel Noble Jr. Award: STRANGLEHOLD’S MEL NOBLE JR.
Most people wait a year or two before changing the name of an award—in this case The Crazy of the Year—to something honoring an athlete’s contributions to said award. In this case, I’m not waiting a second to officially change The Crazy of the Year Award to the Mel Noble Jr. Award. His win was that impressive.
For starters, Noble Jr. is a demolition derby driver. It’s a shade of crazy.
Noble Jr. is also legally blind. The only place he can legally get behind the wheel of a car is at the Route 66 Raceway. This is crazier still.
However, these two reasons don’t factor into Noble Jr.’s award winning season. His well-earned award was a product of the lunacy he put on display First Night in Stranglehold’s race against Mean Green Machines.
Noble Jr. was racing well and got slammed by one of the Mean Green Machines’ drivers. It was a slightly unusual hit and as a result of this, Noble Jr.’s helmet popped right off his head. It went on to fly out the window causing numerous children in the stands to wonder whether his actual head was still in the helmet.
Noble Jr. shook this off, scanned the track and then continued racing. Helmetless.
But, hard as it may be to believe, we’re still not at the truly crazy part. That happened a few seconds later when Noble Jr. pulled a full speed, head-on collision with the Mean Green Machine’s Ryan Decker.
Helmetless.
Prior to First Night of 2011, there’d never been any kind of rule in the TDA handbook detailing that drivers had to race with their helmets on. There wasn’t any need for such a thing. On the off-chance that someone’s helmet would inadvertently come off—it happened to Seek-N-Destroy’s Greg Mesich twice in 2010… in the same race no less—that driver would simply exit the track or stop racing and reaffix his helmet. He would not, however, leave his helmet off, re-enter the fray and try to pull a head-on with someone.
After Noble Jr.’s insane stunt, TDA commissioner, Sherri Heckenast actually felt compelled to change the rulebook to prohibit drivers from racing without helmets. It takes an act of absolute lunacy to get a league to change its rules because of something you did, but Noble Jr. was up to the task.