The Go3 Racing Team is owned and operated by Ed Cooper Jr. of Evansville, Ind. Ed co-owned the team with his dad until the elder Cooper, Ed Sr., passed away in December 2005. The father-and-son team first embraced Unlimited racing in the 1950s, when Ed Sr. helmed a large patrol boat for the Madison Regatta committee. Years later, teenager Ed Jr. retrieved disabled hydros from the Ohio River race course with a runabout.

“That’s how I met Bill Cantrell,” Ed Jr. said, referring to the renowned Gale driver. “I towed him in once after he conked out, around 1965. That evolved into a job on the Miss Madison crew in ’66. The shop was just two blocks from my house, so I cleaned parts and disassembled motors for crew chief Dave Stewart.”

After college, Ed Jr. worked on Cantrell’s and Graham Heath’s race team for four years. The highlight was racing their former My Gypsy as Miss Budweiser for a while in 1979 while the new Griffon Bud was being built. Then came an early 1980s stint on Jim Sedam’s U-22 team.

The Coopers formed their own racing team in 1985 and bought Chuck Hickling’s Tempus hull. Since then, the Coopers have built and raced another three hulls, the last of which began racing in July 2002. Ed Jr., 56, retired in 2005 as a history and geography teacher at North Posey Junior High School near Evansville. The Coopers live 12 miles west of town in a rural setting — “There’s about 400 acres of soy beans across from my house,” Ed said. He began teaching in 1975 after getting his B.A. and master’s in history from the Univ. of Evansville, and after working “more jobs than you want to hear about.”

“For several years I was an auto mechanic for Sears,” Ed said. “It paid my way through college. Right after graduating, I worked for the city as a Neighborhood Youth Corps counselor. That’s when America cared about people, before inner-city kids were considered a blight.”

Ed married Barb Ratliff (also a retired teacher) in 1971. They have two children: Susan is 26; Go 3 Racing crew member Eddie, 24, is the third-generation Cooper to work on a hydroplane.

For years before his retirement, after having taught school all day, Ed would come home and walk across the yard to his expansive boat shop and work into the night. Somehow he and the family find time for other hobbies — jet skiing, water skiing, riding bicycles, reading. Perhaps retiring from teaching will afford Ed and Barb more spare time.

“People ask what motivates me,” Ed says. “It’s trying new things, making more horsepower, going faster. That’s hard with our limited resources. But the pleasure of winning compensates for all the hard work and frustrations. And more important than winning is reaching our potential – doing the best we can with what we have. Wins are not expected for our team, so they’re nice when they happen.”