“She’s directed the whole thing,” Freese said about how he and Erin got into racing. “I didn’t get her to do it, she got me to do it, and I wouldn’t trade it for a million dollars—to be able to share that time with your kid.”
Skip Freese was mechanically inclined from a young age and liked to tinker with how things work. As an adult, one of his hobbies was having what he called a “toy car—something to work on, fix up, maybe sell,” he said. He had a particular affinity for 1963-67 “Mid-Year” Corvettes, with the iconic Sting Ray design and muscle sports car power and handling. Over the years, he had “seven or eight of them,” Freese said.
Freese loved cars, but he was not a racer. He was an insurance agent and generally risk averse, especially when it came to his driving record. “I liked the performance of the cars,” he said, “but I was always very judicious about driving them.” When he came home from work, Freese often took his young toddler daughter Erin out for cruises with him in his hot rods, and they sometimes met up with other car guys who got together and admired each other’s cars. “Erin liked to see the cars. She called them ‘vroom-vroom’ cars,” Freese recalled.
Erin was a shy child, and her parents wanted to make sure they exposed her to different activities she might enjoy once she was school-aged. They enrolled her in music, karate, soccer, and other extracurriculars, but nothing seemed to stick. One day, when Erin was about 13, Freese asked her if she’d like to see a race with him at Milan Dragway. She was interested but requested a different date than the one her father had in mind. Unbeknownst to Skip, Erin had recently watched a movie “Right on Track” based on two real-life drag racing sisters who upset the boys club of drag racing and win the junior dragsters race. Erin, it turned out, without telling her dad, deliberately picked a weekend when she knew junior drag racing was scheduled at Milan.
“She’s directing me back to the pit area, where the junior dragsters are—half-scale cars designed for kids between 8-16,” said Freese. One of the junior dragsters, a girl about 14, offered Erin the chance to sit in her racecar. “I’ll never forget that moment as she was sitting in that car, her face looking up at me, and asking, ‘Could we do this together, Dad?’ I’ll just never forget it,” Freese said.
Buying special clothing or equipment is one thing for a child trying out an activity, but buying a racecar is quite another. Freese was willing to investigate, however, and began perusing websites to learn more about it. That’s when he stumbled across a junior dragster online forum where he discovered an inquiry already posted by his young daughter. Over the next weeks and months, Erin persisted in telling him about different cars for sale they might check out. “That’s when I knew it wasn’t just a passing phase,” Freese said.
Morgan, for her part, looks back on her start in the sport with deep gratitude. “My dad is one of the major catalysts for my racing. When he bought me my first racecar at 13, I knew we didn’t have a lot of money, but he lied to me and said his ’66 ‘Vette was rusting out—it wasn’t—but he sold his dream car to fund my dream. I could never repay him,” Morgan said. Although Freese knew a lot about how cars work, he didn’t know anything about how to race them. Father and daughter had a big learning curve to work through together as they formed a team with Skip as mechanic and Erin as driver. “She was at a disadvantage at first because I didn’t know enough about drag racing to teach her. She had to pick up how to race from the seat of her pants and talking to others,” said Freese.“Going to the track with her was a lot of fun. Racing is kind of like a club, and it was more fun having my kid do it than just doing it myself. It wasn’t like I was just driving her to an activity and dropping her off to pick up a few hours later. We were really learning and doing it together. And to be able to do this with my daughter . . .” Freese trailed off. “It’s hard to understand the value.”
Morgan remembers that lots of parents in junior racing would push their kids hard, but not her dad. “If I didn’t want to go to the dragway, we didn’t. If I wanted to, we did. He didn’t say anything if I screwed up in a race because he knew I would already know and be down on myself,” said Morgan. “He wants to race; he wants to go, but he didn’t push. We learned a lot together.”
Morgan had some success as a junior dragster but was mostly learning the ropes of racing and at 13, had come to the sport late. By the time she was aging out of the junior circuit at 17, her father figured her interests were likely to change. But Erin wanted to move up to a bigger racecar. At 17 and 18, and still in high school, Erin was becoming a more competitive racer and most of her competitors now were men in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. According to her father, “They treated her as a peer. She was good, and they knew they needed to be on their game racing against her. After a race, all the drivers would talk to each other, and it was a good growth experience for her—she had to get comfortable talking to adults,” Freese said.
“Racing was life changing for me,” Morgan said, transforming her from a shy girl to a confident young woman. But it also helped her “learn how to deal with hardship and adversity, how to pick up the pieces,” she said.
Team Freese suffered a setback in 2013 when a garage fire incinerated their racecar, but within two years after getting another car and modifying it to Skip’s specifications, Erin would win her first track championship.“Racing teaches a lot about human nature,” her dad reflected. “What people will do to win—the good, the bad, the ugly—the honesty, the cheating, the conniving, the sportsmanship. [Erin] learned a lot about people, and it helped her learn how to hold her own. I would always talk with her about winning, humility. She’s always been respected at the track and has learned a lot about being the bigger person and getting treated as an equal,” Freese said.
Morgan has been drag racing now for almost two decades. She is currently on hiatus after having a baby in 2022, but she has every intention of returning to the track. When she became a mother, Skip suggested they sell their racecar. “But I see tears in her eyes, and she said, ‘I don’t want to hear the s-word—‘sell’—and so we still have the car and she still wants to race,” Freese said.
“I always had concerns about her racing,” said Freese. “She’s going 150 mph, with another car right next to her. People can get hurt. I only have the one kid. It can be scary as a dad—should I or should I not be doing this? But she would be crestfallen if I told her we’re not racing anymore, and I could see the benefits for her. So, I cross my fingers and hope.” He once suggested when she was in college she could get a slower car that would allow her to race in more classes, but Erin wasn’t interested. She has a need for speed. And he is a devoted dad whose daughter happens to love drag racing.
“I can’t pretend to know what motivates a woman to do anything,” said Freese. “But I suspect girls who don’t have a good relationship with their father, well, I always wanted her to have a good relationship with me. We’re like this,” he said, crossing his index and middle fingers to illustrate the strong bond between them. “She doesn’t want to let me down, and I don’t want to let her down. You can give a good gift to your kid, but unless it’s something you can truly share, there’s very little value,” Freese said. The feeling is mutual. “My dad is my best friend,” said Morgan. “He is truly an incredible human being who gave me my dream."
