At the Southern Monster Truck Showdown, it’s all about the noise.

Friday night, local monster truck fans came out to see their favorite drivers perform doughnuts, jumps and wheelies in the Chicopee Woods Agricultural Center, getting up-close-and-personal to the spectacle they usually only see on TV.

Gale Hill, a promoter for the show, said seeing the trucks in a smaller venue offers more opportunity for audience interaction.

“They really enjoy it,” Hill said. “The more the crowd interacts with the drivers, the more (the drivers) enjoy what they’re doing.”

For Nathan Howard, seeing the enormous trucks up close is a dream come true. The 4-year-old fan can recognize every monster truck in the arena and pair it with its driver.

He watches monster trucks on TV every morning.

But when the trucks got loud, the young fan had to cover his ears and turn away.

However, his cousin, 11-year-old Evan Satterfield, was more than happy when the arena filled with the noise of the monster trucks’ engines.

Evan loves “the loudness and the big tires,” and he said he thought Friday’s show would be a lot better than just seeing it on TV.
“It’s live,” he said. “And you can hear the noise.”

Chris McDougald, a monster truck fan for 24 years, said the ground-shaking noise is exciting every time he comes to a show.

His said his favorite part of watching monster trucks is the free-style event, when drivers can break loose and just go crazy.

“They can do anything they want to do,” McDougald said. “That’s where the crowd whoops and hollers and goes wild.”

Douglas Hullett of Gainesville said he also enjoys the no-rules segment.

“They do doughnuts, jump as high as they want to on certain ramps and destroy as much as they can,” he said.

After seeing Friday’s show, 12-year-old Kyree Willis might go out and become a monster truck driver himself.

Last year, he saw the trucks with one of his friends and couldn’t get the excitement out of his head.

“When I first saw it, I was thinking about being in a really big one — really driving it,” he said.

And that’s exactly where some of the drivers featured in Friday’s show got their start.

“As little boys they wanted to be a monster truck driver — just like a lot of the little boys in the stands — and for them it just became a reality,” Hill said. “It’s as much fun for the driver as it is for the people in the stands.”

The event continues today with a pit party beginning at 6 p.m.