About to become the winningest woman in motorsports, Erica Enders reflects on career

When Erica Enders was 8 years old, she saw an article about a junior drag racing league.

Her father, Gregg, was a drag racer, and she and her sister, Courtney, loved going to the track with their dad. He would come home in the evening and work on his car in the garage, and the Enders sisters found themselves intrigued by the sport.

She was a junior dragster for nine years, and then at 16 started racing in the National Hot Rod Association’s Pro Stock class. Now, Erica Enders, who is in her 20th season in professional racing, is on the verge of history. Her next win will be No. 52 — and make her the winningest woman in motorsports.

It hasn’t come without adversity. She said her career has featured far more valleys than peaks. But she loves what she does — and it’s only made those peaks feel even better.

“It has changed significantly in the past couple of years with more younger people racing. But it used to be the old dudes at the country club, no chicks allowed,” Enders said Saturday in her trailer outside zMAX Dragway in Concord. “When I came in as a 19-year-old girl, I can’t imagine the things that they thought and said. I heard a lot of it.”

Enders remembers hearing things like, “This ain’t some playground for little girls.” And those naysayers fueled her confidence. She’s always relished the idea of proving people wrong.

But she felt drag racing made that different from other sports and activities. If she’d do well early on, people may have attributed it to her strong car and team. And if she didn’t, it may seem like it was because she was a girl and couldn’t do it.

“You’re judged under a different microscope,” Enders said. “But I think over the years, with our on-track success, we have earned the respect of competitors. It’s definitely a lot different now, for sure, than it was.”

Erica and Courtney starred in a 2003 Disney film, “Right on Track,” which covers their true story about competing in a male-dominated sport and Erica’s persistence and determination to succeed.

When she was getting into the sport, Erica Enders remembers looking up to female racing legends like NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle champion Angelle Sampey and Shirley Muldowney, who was known as the “First Lady of Drag Racing.”

Now Enders, who will pass Sampey for that elusive 52nd victory by a woman motorsports driver, regularly has parents telling her their daughters are becoming junior dragsters because they were inspired by her story in that movie.

“On one hand, I just want to be the best driver. The gender plays no role in what we do. Once you put your helmet on, none of that stuff matters,” Enders said. “But on the other side, how unbelievable and amazing it will be to be the winningest of all time in any form of motorsports — it’s a pretty tough gig to get on top of.

“If I get that next win, I’ll pass Angelle (Sampey), and she was a hero of mine as a child. It all comes full circle. It’s really neat, but it goes to show you that through hard work and surrounding yourself with good people, anything’s possible if you don’t give up. You just can’t quit.”

Gregg, her father who raced, was particularly encouraging and set the precedent that you can accomplish anything if you set your mind to it and work hard. Their bond remains strong — Enders calls him before every pass she makes when she races.

But she didn’t put all her efforts into drag racing initially. She played volleyball, basketball, track and golf in high school in Cypress, Texas, roughly 24 miles from Houston, including playing club volleyball from second grade through her college years at Texas A&M. She said she didn’t do anything “super girly,” as she loved playing sports and going racing.

Looking back, Gregg says he thought his daughters had something special with racing — but any parent can think that, Erica said. But in this case, his daughters worked really hard at their craft and never gave up after he gave them the tools they needed to be successful.

“I was that kid in the third grade,” Enders said. “When your friends are saying: ‘I want to be a doctor,’ ‘I want to be a lawyer,’ ‘I want to be an astronaut,’ I said: ‘I’m going to be a drag racer.’ And here we are some 30 years later.”

Again, her success hasn’t come with adversity. She raced for seven years before she finally won her first Pro Stock race. There were 24 events each year, and every time, she wouldn’t come away with a win. She’d have to pick up her pieces and make sure she actually had the funding to continue racing. She remembers putting her head down onto her desk and crying several times — also knowing that she had an education and could probably make more money doing something else.

But racing is what she truly loved. She stuck with it, and now she’s on the cusp of becoming the most successful woman to do it.