Goddard earned much of his notoriety and success on the high banks of the now defunct Atomic Speedway near Oak Ridge, Tennessee, but there are no clay ovals in the state that have escaped his siege. At Atomic, Goddard earned marquee wins in the Memorial 100 and the J.T. Kerr Automotive 100, but earned arguably his biggest win at the 1/3-mile "bowl" in the 1984 Tennessee Dirt Track Championship.
Today, Goddard turns the wheel primarily at Volunteer Speedway in Bull's Gap, which proudly claims to be the world's fastest dirt track. Spending one's Saturday nights wrestling a Dirt Late Model through 12-second laps on 34-degree banking is not exactly what most retirement age folks visualize doing, but Goddard would have it no other way as he still has the competitive fire. For his enviable record, longevity and untiring love and devotion of the sport, Herman Goddard becomes the fifth driver from the state of Tennessee to enter the National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame and most deservedly so.-Tony Hammett
Joe KosiskiNebraska
Spun from a family legacy of dirt stock car weekend warriors, Joe Kosiski is the first of his Omaha, Nebraska, race family to be inducted into the National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame. His father competed from 1952 through 1979, followed by younger brothers Steve and Ed.
Joe began his days in the cockpit in 1975. Since then, he has garnered 400 feature wins in over 20 states with countless track and series titles to his credit.
His name is inscribed in NASCAR weekly short track record books. He was the 1986 and 1992 Central Region Champ, the 1999 and 2000 Midwest Champ, the 2006 Division II Champ, and in 1986 was the Weekly National Champion. He was in the Top 10 of the NASCAR Weekly Series Divisional Standings from 1985 to 2002. He's also a five-time champion of the O'Reilly All-Star Series with 45 wins.
Kosiski has 16 track championships with nine coming at his home track, Sunset Speedway in Nebraska. Big race wins have also come his way, including the Gold Cup Invitational and the Grand National races in Iowa, multiple Thunderbird Opens in Minnesota, the Colorado All-Star Invitational and the Winston 100 in Missouri.
He's also run with a number of sanctioning bodies, including the World Dirt Racing League, the IMCA Deery Brothers, the MLRA, the NCRA, and many more. He also saw action with ARCA, running and finishing well in races at Atlanta and Talladega.
Today, he continues his dirt magic in his famous No. 53.
-Bob Markos
Chuck McWilliamsKentucky
Back in the 1960s and '70s, the heart of the Dirt Late Model sport lay in the Ohio/Indiana/Kentucky area and Chuck McWilliams was one of the stars of the period. There were hundreds of career wins and numerous Top 3s, but he never kept count.
McWilliams was around for an amazing 52 seasons from 1954 to 2005. He recalled his primitive beginnings in a '46 Plymouth Jalopy, as they called those cars at Queen City Speedway near Cincinnati.
A truck driver by trade, the six-foot-three driver spent part of his career with the national traveling series of ARCA and USAC.
"I ran with the ARCA group from 1970 through 1972," he recalls. "I ran at Daytona three times and had finishes of Third, Fifth, and Seventh."
With USAC, he had a great 1972 season and was named Rookie of the Year after winning two dirt races, including a win at his home track of Tri-County Speedway in Ohio.
During his USAC/ARCA days, McWilliams was a Mopar man of the first order. "Those Hemi-powered cars were really something," he says. "I ran models like the Dodge Charger and the Plymouth Road Runner."
Having done well with ARCA and USAC, McWilliams said he thought about trying NASCAR, but decided against it. "I was getting started on my salvage business," he recalls, "and to move south, it would have been very tough on the family. About 1975, though, I decided that I would finish my career running on the dirt on area dirt tracks."