Star-Journbal Editor
Twenty-eight feet, six inches!
That's how far Arik Schmidt of rural Hillsboro pedal-pulled a heavy weight behind a toy tractor recently to win the nine-year-old Kansas Pedal Pull Association Championship at the Kansas State Fair.
On Saturday, the Goessel Elementary School fourth grader will represent the entire state of Kansas against top pullers from across the nation at the 2006 National Pedal Pull Competition, in Mitchell, S.D.
In a setting that seems just right for an event of this magnitude, the championship pulls will be conducted outside at the Corn Palace, an Agrarian Mecca renown for having its exterior walls covered by magnificent murals made of multicolored kernels of corn.
"I just couldn't believe it!" Arik said of his big pull at Hutchinson. "I thought it was just a dream! Ha!"
But the champion's trophy, T-shirt, and his hearty "Ha!" prove it really happened. He qualified for the state fair by being the second-place boy earlier this summer at Goessel Threshing Days.
When the first-place winner was unable to compete due to a family conflict, Arik was called upon to go pedal Sept. 10 at Hutchinson.
A natural-born storyteller, Arik has a habit of huffing exclamations, such as "Ha!" or "Ho!" or an occasional sigh with whatever air is left in his powerful lungs at the end of his sentences.
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For instance, "Are you the youngest in your family?"
"I'm afraid so, (Sigh)."
Or, "Can you tell us how you won the state pedal pull?"
"I guess it was hot, but I really couldn't tell the temperature because I was so excited, ha!"
Arik is the son of Leroy and Nancy Schmidt, and youngest of four children. They live on a rustic farm west of Hillsboro in the Goessel school district, from where they operate an authentic frontier experience called the Osage Mule Company.
The Schmidts make a living taking city folks on authentic trail rides back to the frontier days. There are stout mules in their stable and covered wagons circled up in the wooded front yard of their rustic farm home.
According to Arik it's a perfect place to be a growing boy.
"I get plenty of fresh air, and exercise," he said. "It's just about perfect, I'd say."
Arik's parents couldn't have picked a better place to raise a pedal-pull champion.
Their farm sits in a valley on Diamond Road, so when Arik wants to ride somewhere on his bicycle, it's uphill on the rocky gravel in both directions.
But hard pedaling is really not a problem for Arik, it's his passion. He developed powerful legs by pedaling a bicycle, not because he was training to win a tractor pull, but because that's his favorite way to play.
There's nothing he'd rather do than mount his Mongoose BMX bicycle and race around the dusty trail that runs at least a couple of hundred yards around the woods and covered wagons.
His opponent in these races is his trusty dog, Dude, a German shepherd who deserves his share of the credit for helping his master make it to the top of the pedal pulling ranks.
Arik wore Dude out the day the reporter came. The dog lay down with his tongue out as his master kept going around the wagons and the stables and the mule barn.
"We've been doing it since he was a pup," Arik said. "Except I've had the pleasure of running him over, oh, about 16 times, ha! I did a front flip once. It was a really bad one, right over there."
Arik may be big-boned and stout, but he's not at all fat like a lot of boys his size. He's from hardy Prussian stock, from the old country. In fact, the name Arik is the old-country way to spell Eric, which is how his name is pronounced.
Grandfather Schmidt farmed with plow horses until the day he retired in 1958; and Arik's father is a big, strapping man.
"Arik's a husky kid," his mother said. "But he really is active. He doesn't sit around."
About the only time Arik is sitting down is when he's earning A's and B's in his fourth-grade classroom, or riding his bicycle.
It was only recently that he began sitting down on pedal-powered tractors, pulling weights of up to 300 pounds.
The state fair championship was only the second time he'd ever been in a pedal pull competition, he said.
The first was at what he called "The Goessel World's Fair! Ha!"
While only nine, Arik speaks with the confidence of a boy who has experienced enough of the old west to fill his own Louis L'Amour novel.
Listen to his father, and you see where the boy's knack for telling campfire stories came from.
"Since he was a baby, we worked for the wagon train out in the Flint Hills," Leroy said. "We worked for the Flint Hills Overland Wagon Train Trip Company. And we have pictures of him in a stroller out there, completely bald. He lived with us out there on weekends every summer in that sheepherder's wagon right over there."
Leroy points to a dusty wagon tucked under a nearby tree. Almost everywhere you look on the farm there are things that might've been there just the same 100 or more years ago, including plenty of boy chores.
Arik is responsible for feeding the cats and the donkey, and doing whatever else needs done.
"He's a good helper," Arik's father said. "He drives the tractors out here."
Leroy gets a gleam in his eye when he talks about his youngest boy's knack for driving horses and mules.
"Out of all our kids, he's the most likely to keep the mule company going," Leroy said.
"If you're out here when you can spend some time and watch him drive, you'll see that technically, he can slide the lines through his hands so casually, you know, it's uncanny."
"It doesn't matter if he's driving mules, pulling logs from the creek, or going down the road on a hitch cart, anything. He can drive it."
"He won a blue ribbon in Mulvane a few weeks ago, driving a team of Belgians."
Asked if he'd be interested in running the Osage Mule Company one day, Arik said, "I suppose I most probably will. Ha!"
With his piston-pumping legs and uncanny quickness, chances are good that before he drives any mules, Arik will spend a few seasons driving opponents off the line of scrimmage.
After that, who knows?
Perhaps college?
Maybe even the pros?
With a background like his, it's a cinch that sportswriters everywhere will love to recount the Saga of Big Arik Schmidt:
"Who started out as a baby on a Flint Hills wagon train, and grew up driving teams on a mule farm; who got ox-strong legs pedaling his loyal dog into the dust around and around the covered wagons, and won a state pedal pull when he was only nine!
"And then he was off to the Corn Palace, to see the murals, and pedal at nationals
And the saga continues.
Ha! Ho! (Sigh).
