When Hockinson's Curtis Wharton watches his daughter Jessie ride in Saturday's Washougal Nationals women's professional race at Washougal Motocross Park, he's likely to be cheering wildly as his stomach churns.
It's been that way for him since Jessie, 19, straddled a motorcycle almost 10 years ago. Curtis Wharton loves that his daughter, who is 5-foot-6 and 112 pounds, rides a motorcycle.
"She's my fragile, beautiful girl and I worry about her on a dirt bike. I'm a wreck watching her," Wharton said. "But in my world, I expect all my kids to do anything someone else can do. My daughters are just like another one of the guys. Maybe I'm an odd dad, but I love my girls riding. It's teaching them how to deal with life."
The Whartons say local girls/women's motocross is growing. Races at Portland International Raceway often have seven or eight riders, but occasionally there will be 15 and as many as 20 in a race. WMX events -- the professional races -- usually have between 30 and 40 riders.
The Washougal race is Jessie Wharton's first since she broke her collarbone in late May at a Texas WMX event.
Wharton says she began riding to spend time with her family -- she's one of four children, three of whom ride. Curtis Wharton began riding a motorcycle with his son, Mason, around 2000. Soon his oldest daughter, Katie, was riding. Now Katie Riehl, 21 and married, she still occasionally rides in amateur races.
Jessie Wharton, who graduated a year ago from Summit View, an alternative high school in Brush Prairie, said keeping up with her sister was a big draw to getting on a motorcycle. "I wanted to be like her," Wharton said. "It was a sibling rivalry on a bike."
At her first race in 2004, she recalls "riding with just a helmet, no gloves and just shaking sitting on the (starting) line."
Motocross has grown on her to the point where she turned professional last year.
Wharton, who has a riding coach as well as sponsors to supply some equipment and apparel needs, said she decided after competing in the prestigious amateur Loretta Lynn Motocross last August in Tennessee that she would turn professional.
"I knew I was capable, and I thought it would make me better," she said.
Professional motocross is scarcely lucrative for women. Wharton said few make a sizable living. Her goal to is make the top five in WMX in 2013.
Anyone questioning Wharton's resolve to make it in motocross need only go back to 2006, when she was involved in a horrifying accident at PIR as an eighth-grader. Wharton said she was unconscious for 45 minutes and later that night, doctors told her parents they weren't sure she would survive. Wharton had multiple broken bones in her face, blew out her eardrum and suffered paralysis that lingered for months.
Wharton says the accident left her deaf in her right ear and she still has some equilibrium issues. "It kind of messed me up for a year," Wharton said.
Curtis Wharton said shortly after that accident, he sold Jessie's bike. His daughter was finished with motocross as far as he was concerned. Jessie? She was a stubborn teenager determined to get back on the bike.
For safety reasons, her father said, he gave in. "I wasn't willing to let her get by with subpar equipment and incorrect training," Curtis Wharton said.
It took Jessie Wharton almost three years to get back to racing. At Washougal today, she'll ride against the best women in her sport as WMX returns to the venerable motocross track for the first time since 2008.
Curtis Wharton is prepared for mixed emotions as he watches his daughter race in Clark County's biggest motocross event of the year.
"It's like a dream come true," he said.
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