The Bally Hotel’s Irish Wake continued Sunday featuring their annual coffin race. Two teams competed for the coveted title and trophy.
The Toxic Shamrocks competed for the second year. Mark Fronheiser, one of the coffin builders and team members said “we are looking to take home first place this year. Last year we came in second but we put in more practice this year. And the chief engineer is Uncle George Fronheiser.”
Other team members included Mike Porreca, Dale Warriner, Tate Yergey, Grant Fronheiser and Beck Babb from Boyertown School District.
“This is our Daytona 500. We all have so much fun doing this,” said Fronheiser. He has been attending the Irish Wake for 29 years and watches the coffin races each year. “We finally decided to build something and compete instead of standing around and watching.”
The team “R.I.P.” competed their first time this year. Team members included Brian Rhodenbough, Dave Mahallen, Dave Peterson, Dennis Hartshaw and the driver, ten year old Delia Rhodenbough.
“We said last year we were going to build a coffin and race it. This took about a week to build,” said Brian Rhodenbough. “We didn’t really practice in it, just rode it here from our house in Bally. We really don’t know what’s going to happen,” Brian joked.
After two runs down the “track”, team Toxic Shamrocks were titled the coffin race champions and awarded a trophy and gift certificate to the Bally Hotel. Runners-up, R.I.P were also awarded a gift certificate.
The Irish Wake celebration kicked off Friday, March 13, and carried on through St. Patrick’s Day on Tuesday, March 17.
