Shayle Bade: A Mother’s Day to Remember
By Ben Deatherage LINCOLN, Neb. (May 21, 2026) — Northwest of Lincoln, the pavement eventually gives way to open Nebraska countryside. The towns get smaller. The nights get quieter. And when race day comes around, the traffic starts heading in one direction. Toward Eagle Raceway. For Shayle Bade, those roads have led to dirt tracks for most of her life. What started as an eight-year-old climbing nervously into a go-kart she had never even seen race before, eventually turned into a career spent chasing speed in go-karts, Micro Sprints, and RaceSaver IMCA Sprint Cars. There were wrecks. Tears. Victories. And eventually, one of the best Mother’s Day gifts a racer could ask for. Built Into Racing “Long story short, racing runs through my family,” Bade said. Her cousin Tom raced go-karts years earlier, while another cousin, Billy Alley, competed in Sprint Cars. But it was Tom who helped spark everything. “One day in 2000 my dad just asked me, ‘Hey Shayle, do you want to race a go-kart like your cousin Tom?’” she said. At the [Read More]
