FERGUS FALLS, Minn. — In the summer, all across our region, Friday nights are about lake time and racing, and weekends spent at the track. Just outside Fergus Falls, race car drivers and area teenagers have come together for a weekly tradition of getting cars ready for the track and a weekend of racing.
The kids are part of a growing new movement in the town called " Never Alone." Lifelong race car drivers Brock and Danna Gronwold decided the recent loss of two Fergus Falls students to suicide was too much. Something needed to happen.
"It hit our family pretty hard and we decided we had to find some way to give kids another place," said organizer Danna Gronwold. Every week, the kids not only gather at the Gronwold shop to work on race cars, they also eat together. Area food trucks and restaurants even cater food to the teenagers when they meet, and then train for one of the highlights of the program.
The teenagers get to race cars at the I-94 Speedway. "I find a lot of joy in it, it didn't scare me enough to stop me," said 14-year-old Madison Denoble. And don't think a rollover or broken wrist would stop Denoble.
"I really like how this became a thing and kids can come and work on cars, and if they want, they can go out on track and race," Denoble said. "The ones who have gotten the opportunity to race, the smiles on their face. They say it was the best day of their life," said Brock Gronwold.
The teens come from all kinds of situations. They all know the pressures of socia.
