By Justin HAGER

Five years ago, the CV Weekly introduced readers to Drake Barron and Eric Greco Jr., teenage cousins who were gaining notoriety as athletes in thrill sports. At the time, Barron was a student at CVHS and his younger cousin, Eric, attended Rosemont Middle School. The article described how the two teens were “compiling impressive resumes” in the “off-the-beaten path” sports of mountain biking and stockcar racing, respectively. At the time, Barron was the 25th ranked junior expert rider in the United States, and Greco had just won the 2014 Quarter Midgets of America Grand championship for kids over the age of 8 and over 100 lbs. Yet, despite their early accomplishments, Barron was still relatively new to mountain biking and Greco was still in middle school. It wasn’t yet known if either of the boys could maintain their success and remain competitive on the national stage.

In 2021, the now adult men have answered that question definitively as they each earned multiple trophies in national level competitions. Barron started the year strong, taking second place at the DVO Winter Downhill Nevada State Championships. Then in March both men took home trophies within 48 hours of each other as Greco won the California Lightning Sprint (CLS) Car Season Opener at the Bakersfield Speedway and Barron took third in the DVO Winter Downhill Reaper Madness competition. But the real challenge for both men would come the first week of July, with Greco competing in the CLS Series race at the challenging Santa Maria Raceway and Barron competing at the U.S. Downhill National Championships at Winter Park, Colorado.

Greco’s race started strong with the recent CVHS grad winning all but one heat race of the night and earning the pole position for the 25-lap main event. When the green flag waved to start the race, Greco took an early lead. Three laps into the race he was already a half-lap ahead of most other drivers. Three laps after that he started lapping fellow competitors. Lap 11 posed a significant challenge for Greco after he encountered lapped vehicles, giving CLS series point leader James Turnbull of Indio the opportunity to make a run for the lead. But when the checkered flag signaled the end of the race Greco was still in the lead, having never surrendered the pole position. The victory moved him to third in the CLS point standings, just 22 points behind five-time CLS champion Bobby Michnowicz.

Three days later and 1,200 miles away, Barron didn’t have time to celebrate his cousin’s victory as he prepared for the 19–29-year-old men’s category one national championships. Although Barron’s performance was not as dominant as his cousin’s had been, it proved more exciting as neck and neck battles with less-than-one-second splits developed between several sets of riders, including race victor Jacob Downey (3:58.08) and first runner up Ben Ortowski (3:59.00). Barron took the bronze with a time of 4.06.61, with Ryan Wischmeyer hot on his tail just 1.14 seconds behind. Fifth-eighth place also had a tight battle with the fifth-place rider Chaice Soderstrom defeating sixth place Mitchell Scarese by less than half a second, and the total time separating positions five to eight less than 1.7 seconds.

Readers can find the original article on Barron and Greco at https://www.crescentavalleyweekly.com/sports/03/24/2016/local-kids-go-beaten-path/.