Scisms Set New Dam Challenge Record

And just like that, there is a new Dam Challenge record-holding team at the Lake of the Ozarks. Piloting her 450R Factory Stock-class MTI 390X raceboat, driver Taylor Scism and her father, Randy, who throttled the Mercury Racing 450R outboard engine-powered 39-footer, completed the 189-mile run in 1 hour, 37 minutes and 5 seconds.

(From left) The new Dam Challenge record-holding MTI team of Shaun Peters, Taylor Scism, Randy Scism and Cherell Scism (who stayed ashore his morning) would not be denied.

The new mark topped the record set yesterday by Brad Ekstam and throttleman Rusty Williams of Performance Boat Center in Ekstam’s FASS Diesel Fuel Systems 42-foot catamaran by more than two minutes.

“We did it,” said Taylor Scism, MTI’s client relations manager and this year’s honorary chairperson for the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout, via telephone this morning. “I am super excited.

“That was some of the best boating I’ve ever done at the Lake of the Ozarks,” she added, then laughed. “The water was glass the entire time.”

Such is the benefit of getting out early on the popular Central Missouri waterway, but the Scisms weren’t just there to cut the morning glass. Frustrated by mechanical issues that knocked them out of what was supposed to be a three-boat record attempt yesterday, the father-and-daughter MTI duo came back this morning and gave it another effort.

“We said, ‘We know we can do this,’” Taylor explained. “Let’s get out there and try it again.”

The Scisms were joined in the TS Motorsports raceboat by MTI’s Shaun Peters, whose role was to hop out of the cat and “touch land” as part of the Dam Challenge protocol. But while everyone involved was delighted to claim the record for MTI, raising money for Make-A-Wish of Missouri and Kansas was their primary motivation.

“That’s really what the whole thing was all about, raising money for the charity,” she said. “I am so, so happy.”

It was all smiles in the TS Motorsports raceboat cockpit after today’s record-setting effort.

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