AACA / AMCA Dual Judging at Charlotte
Keith Kizer | Published on 6/10/2025
Photo above by Jerry Clemmons, photo below by Tom Gibson
The judging of motorcycles at AMCA National Meets is an experience that less than 4% of our active members take advantage of each year, yet it is one of the leading components of each event.
One of the contributing factors is vast, unreachable members who don’t travel too far from home. For those in the Southwest and Midwest, for many, it’s over a thousand miles to a national meet. A couple of years ago, while working on our archives in the AACA Library, Steve Moskowitz, CEO of the AACA, brought up the idea of having co-judging at selected AACA events. The idea was to have AMCA judging at the same weekend as AACA judging, two separate judging systems at one location.
Over the next year, we started working on the details and made a proposal to the AMCA Board. For the AMCA, we would target one or two AACA locations each year that were well outside the AMCA schedule of events. In order to make the first one successful, we needed to pick an event located within driving distance of many previously judged motorcycles and where known judges lived. Then, the second location would need to be an event, which would be nowhere near a club event.
After Steve got the two host regions to sign off on the idea, we decided on Charlotte, NC, for the location with a circle of influence. The second, Galveston, TX, for its remoteness. From South Texas, it’s 1,000 miles to Omaha, NE or Daytona Beach, FL. The proposal was made at the Fall board meeting and was approved. Quickly, we started promoting the Charlotte event, hosted by the Hornets Nest Region.
The response was overwhelming. We had eighteen members register for a total of 26 motorcycles. More amazing was 18 judges, 6 of which came just to judge. We had fifteen brands represented spread over seven classes with Mark Becker having the two oldest motorcycles, the 1938 Scott Flying Squirrel and 1939 Matchless Model X.
Also surprising was where members came from to participate in a car show to see how the big boys (and girls) do it. Aside from the local North and South Carolina members, others came from Alabama, , Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and as far away as Massachusetts. Our Senior Marque Specialist on Japanese motorcycles, the infamous Bob Anderson, came all the way from Florida just to help us judge motorcycles.
Now the field was set, and we all converged on America’s Home for Racing, the Charlotte Motor Speedway. AACA Judging is always on Saturday, so we planned on having AMCA judging on Friday evening to lessen the hotel nights for those traveling. Participants start taking to the field at 7am Saturday due to the flurry of activities throughout the day.
Those who want to participate in AACA judging are required to attend a judging school once a year. It’s a two-hour school on Friday afternoon. At the close of the school, we commenced with AMCA judging an hour later. With so many judges, we were done inside of two hours, followed by our standard AMCA awards ceremony on the field. We awarded 10 Junior First, 5 Seniors, 10 Winners Circle and 1 Marque Excellence, Todd Weed’s Unrestored 1974 BMW R90/6.
For most of us, it was early to bed and back on the show field at 7:00am so we could attend the AACA Judges Breakfast. Now this is judging breakfast at another level. If you participate in judging, you are required to pre-register and attend breakfast. Here you meet and sit with your judging team and review all the vehicles you will be judging. Breakfast is obviously a sit-down, nice breakfast. It is more a reflection of a typical national meet or road run banquet. After breakfast, you have the opportunity to walk the field and look at each entry prior to judging.
Car teams are made up of five judges: exterior, Interior, Chassis, Engine, and the Team Captain. Each has its own role, and vehicles are judged in five minutes. Motorcycles consist of four judges, as an Interior judge is not needed.
When the day is done, their awards ceremony is held at that evening’s banquet. If you achieve your first award, the Junior First award, it’s the biggest and best, equivalent to an Oscar; just much bigger and tipping the scale at ten pounds. If this were the only award you ever received, the time and investment would have been worth the effort.
The photo below shows the start of the AACA Banquet inside Charlotte Motor Speedway’s The Speedway Club. AACA President David Anspach led the opening remarks, with a large number of awards in the background. To the far right is Chief Judge Dave Bowman. You can’t tell from this photo, but there were about 200 people in the room.
The first photo is AACA's Junior First award. The photo to the far right is me accepting my first ever Junior First AACA award from AACA President, David Anspach.
From someone who was forced by his spouse to throw away dozens of racing trophies, my AACA Junior First award proudly sits in my office and will be with me until the day I die. It is that nice.
The major point of this collaboration was for AMCA members to experience judging at a much higher level and offer members who have never had a bike judged the opportunity to do so. This is not to take anything away from how we do things, but to see another club’s immersion in judging. We have several of our Florida members who are eager to now go for their Senior award and will be joining me in Galveston in October. I hope you have the opportunity to join us in Galveston this year.
For a full list of the
AACA Results from Charlotte, see the AMCA Results page. Most everyone on that list also received a Junior First from AACA.