The 2022 PHA Awards banquet was held on November 12 at the Grantville PA Holiday Inn.
We always hold the PHA Critique Meeting at the hotel a few hours before our annual awards banquet, and this year was no exception. We had a good turnout — in person and remote via zoom — and we also had a good discussion. The draft of the meeting minutes as well as drafts of other proposed changes are posted on the Current Schedule page. Our next meeting is scheduled for January 21, 2023.
Enough of the business side of things — the PHA banquet was a lot of fun, and we missed all of you who could not make it.
Before I go any further, please note that the banquet photos in this post are by John Pitman. Thank you John!
In addition, Wayne Domkowski, put together a 400+ picture slide show that was displayed on screen throughout the banquet. He also put together a slide show for the awards presentation, and the photos from that slide show are shown in this post and in the gallery of class champions.
Thank you so much Wayne for all of your hard work! Each image was cropped and edited, and I can’t even imagine how much time it took to put both slide decks together for us on top of the editing work. Note that if you would like to purchase a copy of any of the photos displayed at the banquet, or see what photos Wayne has of your car, please contact him by email at bdi@blackdiamondimaging.com or by text at 908-528-2501.
To start things off, there was banquet registration. Thanks to Melinda Axarlis, Linda Young and Donna Sumner for handling registration!
Some random pictures from the room…
Rich Rock, PHA President, presided over the banquet, and did a great job as usual. We began the awards presentation once dinner was finished. Dave Merritt, PHA Vice President and Secretary, presented the awards as Rich announced them.
Side note — that is me playing in the rain on the screen at Spring Jefferson in the background behind Rich from Wayne Domkowski’s slide show. I am torn between being impressed with how John managed to capture that so perfectly and wondering if it was actually a coincidence…
Overall Award:
The Overall Award is calculated by the overall place, with 100 points to first place, 99 to second, etc. Mark Aubele won the 2022 Overall Award with 775 points out of 800 possible. He had FTD at every PHA event prior to Duryea, and was on track for a perfect score for the season. Unfortunately, he put his car out of commission at the Flag Rock hillclimb. Mark still managed to hold on to first place Overall by co-driving Michele’s car for the rest of the season.
In second place was Dave Cutchins with 762 points, and in third was Michael Robinson with 734 points.
Lloyd Geib Award:
The Lloyd Geib Award is based on position in class and on how many participants are in class. 10 points are awarded for winning the class, and 10 Points are awarded for each driver that one beats in the class. This year, Eric (Rick) Johnson won the Lloyd Geib award with 390 points.
In second place was Michele Aubele with 330 points, and in third was Hunter Huffman with 320 points.
Mileage Award:
The Mileage Award, officially known as the Molti Miglia Award, is calculated by multiplying the number of runs taken by the length of the course. This year, this award went to me, Grace Huntzinger. The total number of miles offered for the season was 142.1, and I raced 132.5 of them. (For those who know me and wonder what happened, my GT3 Scirocco broke at Polish Mountain and I had to sit Sunday out. I ended up running my backup FSP Scirocco for the rest of the season.).
In second place was Jody Miller with 124.7 miles, and in third place was Crystal Hoegg with 103.6 miles.
PHA President’s Choice Award:
This year, for the President’s Choice Award, Rich Rock chose to honor the associations and regions directly responsible for holding PHA events. All of these organizations do so much work to make our events happen, and I was glad to see them recognized and appreciated.
From left to right, Steve Lewis accepted for the Blue Mountain Region (BMR), Dave Merritt for the Steel Cities Region and for the Western MD Chapter of DC Region, Tom Knorr for the Giants Despair Hillclimb Association, and Crystal Hoegg and Ray Kochin for the Weatherly Hillclimb Association.
Class Championship Awards:
To qualify for a year end class championship award, a driver must compete in more than half of the events. In 2022, we had 8 events, so 5 events were required to qualify. Congratulations to the following drivers receiving class championship awards!
Class Place Driver
SSP 1 Robinson, Michael
SSP 2 Robinson, Donna
BSP 1 Weaver, Adam
BSP 2 Daley, Michael
CSP 1 Gerhard, Keith
CSP 2 Witman, George
DSP 1 McCrea, Bryan
DSP 2 Miller, Jody
FSP 1 Hoegg, Crystal
FSP 2 Axarlis, Dillon
FSP 3 DeHart, Donald
FSP 4 Axarlis, Mike
SMF 1 Lewis, Tim
SMF 2 Huffman, Hunter
SMR 1 Johnson, Eric
SMR 2 Aubele, Michele
SMR 3 Feist, Lauren
SSM 1 Stoner, David
AS 1 Craig, Geoff
ITB 1 Oswald, Emily
T3 1 Wuellette, Thomas
SPO 1 Aubele, Mark
SPO 2 Vincent, Thomas
EP 1 Murphy, Timm
GT3 1 Huntzinger, Grace
GTL 1 McLaughlin, Donald
IM 1 Oswald Jr, Robert
ASR 1 Fritzler, Bryan
FS 1 Cutchins, Dave
FS 2 Feist, Bill
FS 3 Malave, Daniel
S1 1 Eikenberg, Jon
S1 2 Bowland, George
S2 1 Weinheimer, Jim
S3 1 Kochin, Raymond
V2 1 Salsburg, Susan
This final picture is of John Pitman’s awesome shoe and coordinating sock. It is significant in many ways, but what stands out (no pun intended) the most to me is the fact that John was at the banquet and standing. He’s been dealing with major issues with his right knee for a good while now, and he missed most of the 2022 season. It was great to see John looking so good, and I would like to thank him again for taking all of the photos at the banquet!
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