By Joseph Goral
Staff Writer
jgoral@mihomepaper.com
AKRON, OHIO — From the Olympics to the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the world has a long history of bringing its most-talented together to celebrate their abilities and craft.
Oxford and Lake Orion have their own world-class talent: 11-year-old soapbox racer Katie Scotti.
Katie began racing about one year ago, but races beyond her experience level, according to her father Jim.
“When she goes to a race, kids with four or five years of experience are the kids that beat her,” Jim Scotti said. “There’s nobody with one year experience who beats her.”
Katie, a gardening fan and soon-to-be sixth grader at St. Joseph Catholic School in Lake Orion, put that year of experience to the test by competing in the All-American Soap Box Derby World Championships in Akron, Ohio on July 20. She earned her opportunity to meet and race against kids from around the country and from as far as Japan by winning the stock division at St. Johns Local Race on June 9.
“It’s fun meeting all the other people from different countries…because I get to talk to them and I get to make friends,” Katie said.

While Scotti’s soap-box journey only began a year ago, the official derby has existed for around 90 years. The Derby’s website credits the idea for the Soap Box Derby to Myron Scott – a photographer who found a group of boys racing homemade cars in the summer of 1933.
Myron was impressed enough with the boys’ racing that he acquired the copyright to Soap Box Derby – its name coming from the orange crates and wooden soapboxes used to build the first cars, according to the Smithsonian.
The next year, Myron found a sponsor when Chevrolet agreed to be the Derby’s first in Dayton, Ohio in 1934.
Around 100 years later, Scotti and her father made their way to Akron to compete in the Derby’s 86th world championship.
Katie’s first race was in heat 618 at the top of Derby Downs race track near the Soap Box Derby Hall of Fame. Katie took lane three in car 340 while Denton Smith of Chattanooga, Tennessee and Maddox Heidt of Stafford, Virginia prepared in lanes one and two.
With drivers crouched over in their seats to minimize wind resistance, the barrier holding cars in place dropped and the race began.
Propelled only by gravity, the cars start off slow, but can quickly gain speeds of up to around 25 miles per hour, according to Jim.
While each race, or heat, at Derby Downs only lasts around 30 seconds and is without turns, Jim said racers use plans and techniques in the same way they would in motor sports. NASCAR drivers and other racers follow the fastest route around a race track, called a line, and Soap Box racers follow a line to avoid defects in theirs.
“The strategy to be a good racer is to listen to the person who is handling your car,” Katie said.
She won the heat by 45 hundredths of a second.
The championships continued for several more rounds, with the top nine finishers earning trophies, according to Jim. And while Katie was knocked out of the championship just before the trophy rounds, it was by a difference of one thousandth of a second.
To watch the world championship visit www.youtube.com/@aasbdorg/streams.