Meaghan Henderson is almost your typical 17 year old high school junior. She is planning for college, managing a boyfriend, driving fast and selling candy bars to support her Boulder City High School.

Very typical, unless you consider Henderson's version of going fast involves speed not legal on your local highway. The giddy teenager, with a brilliant smile, sparkling eyes and long blonde hair runs around at 170+ miles per hour and wants more.

“This is what I want to do,” said Henderson as she talked about her racing. “I want to go to college, locally, get a degree in business administration; I want this is be my profession.”

Meaghan Henderson is almost your typical 17 year old high school junior. She is planning for college, managing a boyfriend, driving fast and selling candy bars to support her Boulder City High School.

Very typical, unless you consider Henderson's version of going fast involves speed not legal on your local highway. The giddy teenager, with a brilliant smile, sparkling eyes and long blonde hair runs around at 170+ miles per hour and wants more.

“This is what I want to do,” said Henderson as she talked about her racing. “I want to go to college, locally, get a degree in business administration; I want this is be my profession.”

Fairly heady talk coming from a budding young woman, standing at the door of adulthood, who also happens to be the youngest winner ever in PSCA's ten year history.

Like most youngsters, Henderson's introduction to drag racing came from her family. Her father bracket raced until the demands of business and family forced him to park his race car. Meaghan was four at the time.

At nine years old, Henderson tried getting into a race car. It didn't work.

“I saw a movie on Disney Channel called “Right On Track” and I wanted to get back to the racetrack. I miss seeing stuff I wanted to do. I got into a car and three seconds after starting it I got out of it. I didn't want to do it.”

Three year later, at the age of 12, Meaghan had the bug once again. Wanting to be sure she was serious, her father made her sit through a day of drag racing. Her father put her in a junior dragster. Four years later, Meaghan moved up to a full sized dragster.

Meaghan loves the rush of going fast and the faster, the better. Still, she wasn't 100 percent sure about moving from the junior dragster to the full sized version. In fact, she almost didn't make it past the warm up.

“At first, when I got in it, we were testing the car, we just warmed it up and I broke down. I was saying 'sell the car, I don't want it. I don't like it.'”

Her father convinced her to at least make a pass it the car. He told her that anything she wanted the car to do, it would do. After that first pass, Meaghan was sold. This was exactly what she wanted to do.

“So, I went down the track at full throttle the entire time and the car got swervey and I didn't even know that it did until I got back. When I got back they ask if I even felt it and I was like, 'No, not at all.'”

From that first fateful pass, a “confidence” moment according to Meaghan, she wanted to do it “again and again and again.

“I realized I do have this power,” she said, speaking about her ability to control the race car.

Like most teenagers her age, Meaghan struggles with the balance of wanting to be a full-time racer and wanting to be with friends. After making a pass, she is quick to return to socializing while her father, Joe, tends to the maintenance aspect of the race car. Meaghan, meanwhile, is out and about in the pits in her yellow golf car with a blue canvas top.

When her friends at school couldn't understand why she was “hanging out” at the racetrack instead of with them, Meaghan showed her maturity.

“You can be my friend but you have to let me do what I want to do, it's my choice. My friends don't have a choice in what I can do with my life.”

The goals this year are simple. Go rounds, win races and make the next step down a long road to success.

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