Doug:
    Doug Elkins is a part time racing announcer at Cayuga County Fairgrounds and Rolling Wheels Raceway Park. He will also occasionally announce at a few other tracks this year when his schedule allows it. Over his 17 year history in the sport, Doug has announced at many dirt tracks across the northeast. His career in racing started in 1990 when he moved from the baseball diamond to the racetrack. The first dirt race that Doug ever saw was also the first one he announced.
    After two years working with the Auburn Astro's as a public address announcer, Doug was approached by his college advisor about a position at a local speedway. Fulton Speedway announcer Arnie Pugh had passed away during the winter and the speedway was looking for a new announcer. After meeting with General Manager Marcia Wetmore, Doug was offered the job that would change his life.
    Over the next few years, Doug began to travel to new tracks and expand his racing resume. Doug has announced at Fulton, Brewerton, Utica Rome, Five Mile Point, Canandaigua, Cayuga County, Rolling Wheels, Syracuse, Fonda, Can Am, Evans Mills, Thunder Alley Speed Park and Tioga.
    Doug is a graduate of Liverpool High School and Cayuga Community College. He studied Radio and TV Broadcasting and began his experiences in front of a camera and behind a microphone while still in high school. Over the years, Doug has hosted three different racing TV shows; co hosted a radio show and worked with This Week on DIRT and Rush Hour Live broadcasts.
    Doug also was as a Producer/Director at WCNY-TV in Syracuse for six years. When he was first hired, Doug was only able to work in front of the camera. Thanks to the help of many fine professionals, Doug learned to produce and direct live TV, shoot and edit video and improve his on-air skills.
    Doug served as an occasional co-host for Upstate Morning and Hour CNY until he moved into the control room to direct and produce the show instead. Doug also won a Syracuse Press Club Award for Best Documentary in 2003 for Great Amusement Parks of Central New York. He also won many national awards as a videographer and a producer. Thanks to his experiences at WCNY-TV, Doug picked up a skill set he did not have before.
    In 2004, Doug founded Elkins Media Service and began to work in radio as the Producer for New Inspiration for the Nation. This experience led him down the path that would lead to his latest venture called dougsdirtdiary.com. Doug has also worked as a play by play announcer for Time Warner Sports in Syracuse.
    Towards the end of the 2005 racing season, Doug felt it was time for a change. Over the winter months, the idea for dougsdirtdiary.com began to take shape. After one stalled attempt, his second try saw backer Russ Hefti and another silent partner enter the picture. With their financial help, Doug was able to build a small studio in his home and turn his idea into reality. With the help of a great team of professionals headed by Webmaster Andy Gittler and Tony Street, dougsdirtdiary.com debuted on April 15 and began telling the stories of dirt racing in the northeast.
    What does the future hold? Elkins Media Service has a three tiered plan in place and is very optimistic about the future of its two media ventures. Doug is humbled by his recent successes and committed to achieving great things over the coming years. It is going to be a great ride!

Tony:
    Tony was born and raised in North Carolina. He's always had a need for speed, which he inherited from his Dad. He was powersliding a go-kart through mud puddles by age 4, and could reach the pedals of his Mom's MG Midget at age 6. But he never had the money to tinker with cars. When he got his first computer, he realized he could tinker with the code all he wanted for free, and if it "blew up," the worst thing that could happen would be that he'd need to reboot. Many reboots later, at age 12, he wrote his first computer program. Considering his home state was ranked 49th in education at the time, that's kinda surprising. We attribute it to the fact that he slept through school so he could play on the computer all night. He wrote a few online games for extra cash, and thought that he could be a freelance programmer someday.
    But after years of working dead-end jobs, from fast food to loading trucks, reality set in. Basically, Tony thought he needed a college degree if he ever wanted to drive something that had more than 4 cylinders, didn't burn more oil than fuel, and could run a quarter-mile before the oak tree outside died of old age. So he stuffed all his possessions into his beat-up sedan and drove off into the sunset, arriving at Rochester Institute of Technology in an alarmingly short amount of time. After graduating with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, he settled down in Syracuse and worked as a lab technician and computer programmer for several years.
    But eventually he moved back to his home state so he could see the sun again. He's still there, trying to figure out where he wants to go next. He's looking for a place that gets blizzards in the winter and tornadoes in the summer, a place that's close to civilization but with lots of uninhabited twisty roads nearby, a place with 3 beautiful women for every man in town. If you know of such a place, he'd really like to hear about it.
    Although his degree is in engineering, his bosses always stuck him behind a computer once they realized the extent of his programming experience. At his last job, he started off running a lab, and ended up practically rewriting every piece of software used by the company for running their testing equipment--from dynamometers to wind tunnels. So, today, he works as a freelance programmer for several companies. He still drives a 4-cylinder sedan, but it's one that came from the factory with 300 horsepower & torque. When he's not working, he's usually behind the wheel of that beastly machine, blasting thrash metal while barreling down a twisty country road.