Loretta Lynn's Titles For Rand, Plessinger, Sellards, and More From Ohio

We’re getting closer to the top with our Scott Sports Countdown to the 2024 Monster Energy AMA Amateur National Motocross Championship at Loretta Lynn’s Ranch. Each day we’ve been going through the states with the most titles at Loretta Lynn’s, in ascending order, and today we reach the state with the fifth-highest total, Ohio, which has claimed 61 championships over the first 42 years of racing at the ranch. Ohio is also the home to the American Motorcyclist Association, which is celebrating its centennial throughout 2024.

At the top of the list for the Buckeye State is New Philadelphia’s Brock Sellards, a Kawasaki Team Green prospect throughout the 1990s. He won five titles between 1992 and ’97 at the ranch, often battling with his future Pro Circuit Kawasaki teammates Ricky Carmichael and Nick Wey. Sellards would win races as a professional, both indoors and outdoors.

Next is Hillsboro’s Greg Rand, a standout in the early nineties for both Team Green Kawasaki and the Suzuki RM-Army. He won a total of five titles at the ranch, including a sweep of the 125 Schoolboy Stock and Mod classes in ’91 and both 125 A Stock and 250 A Stock in ’93.

Blissfield’s Gavin Gracyk racked up four LLMX between 1999 and 2001, then went on to have a decent professional career.

Ohio actually boats two AMA SX/MX Champions who also won at Loretta Lynn’s, Hamilton’s Aaron Plessinger, who went from winning two B class titles in 2013 to claiming the ’18 250SX West Region Championship and the 250 AMA Pro Motocross Championship, and Lisbon’s Gary Semics, the 1974 AMA Supercross Champion in the 500 class and a Senior +45 LLMX Champ in 2012.

East Sparta’s Mike Katin won three vet class titles in the mid-‘00s and longtime pro Tom Carson, who hails from Hopetown, and is now the manager of the Alpinestars Mobile Medical Unit, won the Masters +50 class in 2006.

Trotwood’s Doug Sanger was also a very fast vet rider at the ranch who posted four Senior +40 titles in a consecutive years between 1985 and ’88, and more recently there’s Delta, Ohio’s Broc Peterson, who has won two Vet +30 B titles in the last three years.

And there are champions from Ohio that went on to other significant careers, including Dayton’s Phil Alderton (Senior +30 in 1990), who would eventually co-found Honda of Troy, and what later became Yamaha of Troy; Pickerington’s Mark Burkhart (’96 in 250 B Mod), who became a multi-time AMA Supermoto Champion and X Games winner; and GNCC star Jimmy Jarrett, who hailed from Beloit and returned in 2022 to win the Senior +45 class. And then there is Jeff Gibson of Thornville, who win a single title at Loretta Lynn’s but went on to a very long and successful career as a journeyman pro, racing all over the world, both indoors and outdoors. He also rode six different brands, as he was with Cannondale, as well as all four Japanese brands and KTM. (Husqvarna and GasGas were not part of the KTM Group during Gibson’s days.)

Finally, there was Cincinnati’s Walker Brightwell, a fine young prospect in the early ‘00s who won a pair of titles at Loretta Lynn’s. While Brightwell’s pro career did not gain enough traction to make a living, he did love moto enough to open his own track, Windy Ridge Raceway in Ohio. Sadly, Brightwell, just 25 years old, was killed five years ago in a bulldozer accident while working on his track.

Loretta Lynn's Countdown: Ohio’s Finest

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