A year ago this week, I caught with Bob Morgan Memorial Lake of Ozarks Shoot Hall of Fame member Carrie Sixkiller. The then-51-year-old hoped to beat her personal-best Shootout performance of 73 mph on the three-quarter-mile-course in her 24-foot Baja V-bottom powered a supercharged 525-hp Mercury Racing engine. She didn’t get there, but she did reach 70 mph.
A trailblazing competitor, Carrie Sixkiller hopes to inspire other women to compete in the Shootout. Image by Jeff Helmkamp copyright Helmkamp Images.
Next weekend will mark Sixkiller’s 20th consecutive year competing at the Central Missouri event in the same 33-year-old boat.
So I caught up with her today and asked about her biggest goals for the upcoming event. Not surprisingly hitting a number was not among them.
Her ambitions run deeper.
“I hope to inspire just one woman to take the wheel and believe in herself enough to run in the Shootout,” Sixkiller explained. “For the last 20 years that has been my goal.
“Don’t get me wrong, winning is great, but to show women and little girls they can do anything they want is better,” he continued. “To have our old boat on display alongside million dollar boats and watch people stop and look and can’t believe her age is a feeling like no other.”
But as much as Sixkiller also enjoys “so many charities just by doing what we love to do” and meeting friends who’ve become “family” during the past 20 years, the competition itself remains a thrill.
“It’s the butterflies in my stomach when I fire up the boat at the dock to go out to make a run,” she said. “And the relief after I power her down knowing I did made a safe run.”