By SCOTT NOVAK
Vigilant/Argus

Mikayla Inman has been riding and racing motocross for more than half her life.
She has done some amazing things in the seven years she has been riding, but she may never be more excited than she will be this weekend.

The Vandalia resident, who turned 12 last weekend, is going to get to see professional women racers on her home track in Buchanan.

RedBud will make history this coming weekend when the MotorcycleUSA.com Women’s Motocross Championship series takes to the track for the first time.

The top female riders will tackle one of the circuit’s premier tracks and Inman will be on hand to witness the historic event.

Better yet, she will be able to meet and spend time with some of those drivers today at the track’s media event.

“I think it’s really neat,” Inman said. “It’s the first time they have been invited and it’s the first time they have volunteered to come. I am so excited that they are going to be on my home track. I know they are going to have a blast.”

Her racing career started in 2005, but it was a trip to Silver Lake when she was four with her parents that got her interested in riding.

“I asked if I could ride one,” she recalled about the trip to Silver Lake. “My parents took me to an indoor race in Battle Creek a few months later and my mom said I cried the entire time. She asked my why and I was mad because I had to sit and watch and could not go out and race with the other kids.”

In her first year racing, she finished seventh in Michigan and was the only female rider to crack the Top 10. She was also a Super Series champion.

The next year she repeated as Super Series champion and finished sixth in the state.
She has continued to move up and is currently riding both a KX 85 and a KX 100, although there are plans to begin practicing on a 250cc bike in the near future.

Among her more recent awards are the 2009 Great Lakes championship and a second place overall finish in the Michigan Mafia standings last year.

She finished 12th despite a broken bike at the Las Vegas Arenacross Amateur Nationals in October of last year.

In May, back in Las Vegas, she finished seventh despite a broken shifter that left her in second gear for much of the race.

She is currently first in the GLMX Championship Series.

Inman will be a sixth grader at Three Rivers Middle School this coming September.

She also enjoys soccer, basketball and long distance running, which she admitted was her favorite sport outside of motocross.

She has a large group of sponsors, many of which come from the Michiana area including Circle Oil Company, Behind the Bars Motorsports and Saylor’s Pizza.

Inman will be racing on Sunday and will be competing on the full pro track at RedBud.
She is currently the only female in her division that is tackling the infamous “LaRocco’s Leap, a 120-foot uphill “triple” jump that is the biggest jump in all of motocross.

Activities at the track begin with the media day on Thursday and practice on Thursday with racing in the amateur portion of the weekend slated for Friday and Saturday night, as well as Sunday.
The professionals will hit the track for a full day of motocross action on Saturday beginning at 8:30 a.m. Racing will begin at 1 p.m.

The second moto in the 450cc Class can be seen live on NBC beginning at 3:30 p.m.
Next-day coverage of the 250cc Class will be shown on SPEED beginning at 4 p.m. on Sunday.

Tickets for the event are available at the gate.