Women taking on big role driving monster trucks
In some respects, Rosalee Ramer is a typical college student. A mechanical engineering major at Georgia Tech, she likes to hang out with her friends, practice yoga and play piano. She keeps her laptop handy so she can study on weekends.
On the other hand, her vehicle of choice is a 5ton, 1,500-horsepower truck with which she enjoys flattening cars, performing wheelies and doughnuts or powering off ramps to fly as high as 50 feet in the air. The truck’s name is “Wild Flower.”
Yes, Wild Flower is a monster truck, the pride and joy of the 20-year-old Watsonville native.
If you’ve never been to a Monster Jam, first, bring earplugs. These babies would have made Beethoven hear again.
This is a contact sport, as fans will see when the engines roar at Monster Jam on Saturday night at Levi’s Stadium. Ramer and her Wild Flower will match speed and tricks with a fleet of giant trucks. They’ll include the inevitable Grave Digger, not to mention Time Flys, driven by her father, Kelvin.
Two other drivers scheduled to compete are Becky McDonough in El Toro Loco and Dawn Creten in Scarlet Bandit. Increasingly, the macho world of monster trucks is giving way to women. There are 13 this year out of 83 drivers in Monster Jam.
Debrah Miceli, whose stage name in her pro wrestling career was Madusa, was the first woman to compete in Monster Jam (2001) and the first to win the World Finals (2005).
Ramer’s father, who runs a tow truck company, got his daughter started in monster trucks at a young age. At age 3 she held the flashlight for him and his friends as they worked on engines at night. By age 8 she knew how to change the monster truck tires, no small feat since they weigh 800 pounds.
She was 13 when she used a truck to crush a car for the first time. She drove in her first official event at 14, making her the youngest girl ever to compete. Not only can she drive the truck with aplomb; by now, she essentially can fix anything that goes wrong with Wild Flower.
The safety precautions in these vehicles are so refined that when they flip over, it’s no big deal for the heavily harnessed driver. In fact, Ramer says, “I think it’s fun. Now we’re at the point where we’re doing backflips and corkscrews and things like that on purpose.”
Competitions consist of head-to-head racing
around a course, followed by a two-wheel skills competition — getting up on any two wheels is fine. Ramer’s favorite part comes next: the freestyle. Each driver gets two minutes to do as many tricks as she or he can.
“The goal is to get the crowd on their feet, give them some wow factor,” she said.
That’s because the fans are grading each driver’s performance on their smartphones, and that’s how the winner is determined.
The actual points tour runs January to March, culminating in the Monster Jam World Finals. Last month she placed 14th out of 32 drivers who reached the championship. She also received the Extreme Air of the Year award for a leap in Oakland on which she not only went high but had to salvage an awkward landing.
Ramer plans a career in the automotive industry, having worked summers as an intern in thermodynamic calibration at a General Motors proving ground in Michigan. She arranged her class schedule at Georgia Tech so she has Fridays free, allowing her to fly on Thursday nights to events around the country.
Ramer describes herself as a shy person, but that changes when she’s behind the wheel.
“Out on the track, that’s like my comfort zone,” she said. “I like to goof off and enjoy myself. I’m doing what I love. Something about being in front of huge crowds makes me happy. It’s definitely an adrenaline rush.”