The date was March 25, 2023. The setting was Bill Armstrong Stadium. The task seemed easy for Black Key Bulls, something they had done each of the prior 16 times: qualify for the Little 500.

All they needed to do was complete four laps around the track and complete three successful exchanges. For one of the most historic independent teams the race has seen, they seemed like a shoo-in to be in the field. But, after failing on their third attempt, Black Key Bulls was not able to participate on race day. For their seniors Gavin Goode and Daniel Kang, it was a heartbreaking and unthinkable way for them to go out.

“It was devastating,” former BKB rider Steven Gomez said. “Just shocking.”

Gomez won the race in 2014 and had witnessed his former team finish top-10 in the Little 500 each and every year. But, in 2023 he would be attending the race without a team to root for.

While it may have been a little bit less stressful for Gomez and the rest of the alumni who were there, it left them wondering what to do so history would not repeat itself.

“Last year we had the biggest alumni turnout for a race we weren’t even in,” freshman rider Wiley Close said.

The support was sustained and only increased after the disappointment. In the past, only one donor would be in charge of funding the group. But, that changed ahead of the 2024 race.

“This was the first time we were fully funded by alumni,” Gomez said. As a result, the funding increased tenfold, as did the work ethic of the riders.

“Everyone took a vested interest in doing better,” coach Dave Choinacky said. “It turned into a motivation piece for the guys.”

They had the option to either slack off on training and preparation or to go all-in and be able to hold the pen and write a redemption story.

They chose the latter, and the spring series events proved that. The team qualified on their first try and found their way in the first row after qualifying third. In the team pursuit, Black Key Bulls had multiple teams in the event and ended up with the top two times. The finals consisted of two BKB teams pitted against each other, something that is incredibly rare.

“I wanted to kind of bury (the other BKB team),” senior rider and captain Jack Handlos said, referring to the competitiveness within the group. But, cool heads prevailed and they took it easy considering the conditions were far from optimal.

While those events were fun, whittling the team down to the final four riders was far from easy. BKB needed to choose four riders from six candidates for race day, and the conversation was difficult. Close and junior Will Wagner were by far the two strongest riders, but they needed to fill out the other half of their team. In the end, they talked it out and chose upperclassmen Handlos and Mcguire Wolfe as the final two riders, leaving Zane Snider and Kan Kikuchi on the outside.

Handlos said that despite the decision, Snider and Kikuchi did a great job providing support to the final four riders who would hope to bring BKB back to glory.

There was as much confidence as ever going into the race, even though all four riders were rookies.

“In our minds, they had already won,” Gomez said days before the 73rd running of the Men’s Little 500. For the alumni, it would have been the cherry on top if their former team could return to the throne.

And they did just that. Black Key Bulls took the lead with about 20 laps to go in the 50-mile race, and Wagner pushed them across the finish line to top off the turnaround and giving BKB its third Little 500 victory.

Choinacky said all along the team is like one big family, and Saturday’s win makes it one big happy family with all the support to bridge the past to the present.