Early Years
Cope was born in San Diego, California and was raised in Spanaway, Washington. In high school, he enjoyed auto racing and baseball. He was a successful catcher on the Bethel High School baseball team, and later attended Whitman College to continue his baseball dreams. While being scouted by major league baseball teams, Cope suffered a knee injury that ended his hopes of a big-league career. He then devoted himself to racing full time.
Cope soon progressed through the short-track ranks in the Northwest, and later made his Winston Cup debut at Riverside International Raceway in 1982. Cope's #95 car finished 36th there after developing an oil leak, and he won $625.
He ran part-time in the Winston Cup series after that, making a brief attempt at Rookie of the Year in 1987. In 1989, he signed with Bob Whitcomb to drive the #10 Purolator Pontiac and later Chevrolet, posting four top-10 finishes.
Read more about this topic: Derrike Cope
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or years:
“It is easy to see that, even in the freedom of early youth, an American girl never quite loses control of herself; she enjoys all permitted pleasures without losing her head about any of them, and her reason never lets the reins go, though it may often seem to let them flap.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1984)