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Memorial Trophies
By Catherine Wissian, Race Director

Have you ever wondered where our memorial trophies got their names? I know I have and hopefully I can put to rest some of the queries you no doubt have had.

I'll begin with the Memorial Day long distance race, which is referred to as the Scott Liebler Memorial Race. As many of you know, the Liebler's were one of the founding families not to mention that Al Liebler was the first Commodore of the Blue Valley Yacht Club. They were avid sailors with Al Liebler being a national Flying Junior Champion. The Liebler's only son Scott went sailing with his parents on many occasions in their Mustang class sailboat, named "Scott's Pony."

Although Scott was a skilled sailor he had many other interests that kept sailing on the back burner. His main interest was swimming and he was a Manhattan Marlin in middle school and high school. Eventually swimming was replaced by a new passion, car racing. Scott and his father did the maintenance and tuning of their racing car and eventually started to rebuild motors for other racers. Scott was killed in a tragic "one in a million" car racing accident when he was in his 20's.

Upon his death it was decided to dedicate the Memorial Day long distance race in his name and his parents dedicated a trophy in his name to award to the winner of the race.

Al and Sony Liebler now live in Oklahoma City.

As most of us know, the Spring Racing Series became a memorial in 2002 after the tragic death of Kyle Chapman, Christopher Shipley and Timothy Bennett.

The three boys were all freshmen at K-State and active members in the Boy Scouts. The three headed out on December 4, 2001 to take advantage of the warm weather and get in one last sail before the winter weather really set in. What authorities have proposed happened was that the boat capsized and the three were unable to right the boat in a reasonable amount of time in the freezing cold water. To this day only the body of Timothy Bennett has been found and the others are presumed dead.

It was decided to name the Labor Day long distance race as a memorial to these sailors in 2002. A cup was donated to be awarded to the winner of the Spring Series Races.

Hopefully this has answered some questions about the origins of the people whose names have been memorialized in our races. Thanks to Ken Conrow and Bart Bartholomew for their help in the stories of these young men's untimely deaths.