When Sports Became a Spectator Sport in Claremont

The same town that rallied for athletics last summer found its voice against athletes this spring.

By Kevin Tyson

Last August, the Claremont school district stared into a five-million-dollar hole, and the community did what communities do. People wrote checks. People ran fundraisers. People rallied for the kids. The athletic department, in particular, became a cause celebre. Cut the sports? Unthinkable. Sports build character. Sports keep kids off the streets.

One of the loudest checks came from a place some of those same neighbors have now decided is a public nuisance.

Mike Parks, who runs Claremont Motorsports Park, told the City Council on April 23 that the track donated all of its 50/50 raffle proceeds last summer to the alumni association to help backstop the very athletic programs the budget crisis had threatened. This year, he is doing it again, this time for the twelve-and-under youth baseball travel team. He also runs a go-karting program for kids fourteen and younger. Ninety of them. Five-year-olds with helmets on, learning to drive a line through a corner instead of, as he diplomatically put it, “doing what a lot of other kids do.”

That is a sport. Those are athletes. The track is, among other things, a youth athletics facility that pays its own taxes and writes checks to other youth athletics programs. It has been operating in this town since 1947, which is to say longer than most of its critics have been alive and considerably longer than most of their houses have been standing.

So, naturally, the response from a portion of the community has been to treat it as a zoning problem.

The April 23 hearing on Ordinance 644 brought out a familiar New Hampshire cast. There was the family psychologist who moved to Claremont two years ago, bought a house “miles away” from the track, and now wants the Council to consider that engine noise “activates the central nervous system.” There was the resident four miles away who reports that “the way the land contours” delivers the sound straight to her bedroom window at 9:45 on a summer Friday. Both insisted, with the practiced civic care of people who have read the room, that they do not want the racetrack to go away. They simply want it to be quieter, shorter, smaller, less.

This is the standard rhetorical move of people who would, in fact, like something to go away.

Here is what is striking. Nobody at that hearing said motor sports are not sports. Nobody said the kids in the go-kart program are not kids. Nobody proposed that Little League games end at 8 PM, or that the high school football team play with mufflers. The premise that Claremont owes its athletic programs a hearing, an accommodation, and, in last summer’s case, a bailout was treated as self-evident when the sport was baseball, and as up for revision when the sport was racing.

What I keep meeting, in Claremont and elsewhere, is the resident whose tolerance for ambient civic noise is exquisitely calibrated to whether his children are the ones making it.

Claremont voters approved a $42.9 million school budget in March, with a substantial line item for athletics. Claremont’s racetrack pays property taxes, employs people, brings spectators who buy gas, hot dogs, and motel rooms, runs a youth program, and donates its raffle proceeds to the alumni association that backstops the schools. If the Council wants a coherent policy on community sports, the place to start is the recognition that we already have one, and that one of its most consistent contributors has been pulling onto the track at five o’clock on Friday nights since Harry Truman was president.

Ordinance 644, as drafted, is mostly housekeeping: definitions, hours, insurance, and a graduated penalty structure. None of that is unreasonable. Councilor Irish was right to observe that no one at the hearing actually said they wanted the track gone. The Council’s work now is to ensure the ordinance reflects what people said rather than what the loudest among them implied.

Sixty-five race nights and seventy-five total events would roughly preserve the status quo. It would also preserve a small-business asset that has outlived four generations of complaints from people who moved in next to it. The next time the schools need a check, the Council might consider whether the sound of a small-block V8 on a summer evening is really the price the town is unwilling to pay.

It has, after all, been the price of admission since 1947.

Sources

City of Claremont, NH. Council meeting transcript, Ordinance 644 first reading and public hearing, April 23, 2026. Comments by Mike Parks (50/50 donations to the alumni association supporting school athletics; youth baseball funding; 90 children in the go-karting program; track operating since 1947); Ward 3 family psychologist (“central nervous system” framing; relocation two years prior); Abby Clark, Ward 3 (residence four miles from the track; 9:45 PM noise impact); Councilor Irish (no resident requested closure; 60–65 race-night average); Ward 3 resident (track as a regional asset comparable to the Opera House).

Claremont School District, FY2026 budget approved March 10, 2026, $42.9 million. See “Claremont School Board Politics,” Claremont, March 2026.

City of Claremont. Draft Ordinance 644, Licensing Board Authorization for Motor Vehicle Races, first reading April 23, 2026.

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