LONG POND, Pa. (AP) — Dale Earnhardt Jr. might already be NASCAR’s most popular crew chief.
He's certainly an undefeated one.
Pressed into unexpected service, Earnhardt called the shots for 18-year-old prospect Connor Zilisch in the No. 88 Chevrolet and they landed in victory lane Saturday in the second-tier Xfinity Series race at Pocono Raceway.
“It felt good to have some input and decision-making power,” Earnhardt said. “And then helping Connor understand what our plan was so he knew when to push and what he was expected to do.”
Earnhardt — who won NASCAR's most-popular driver award 15 times — made a pit stop from his day job as team owner at JR Motorsports with normal crew chief Mardy Lindley suspended one race because of a lug nut infraction this month at Nashville.
Aside from his duties as team owner, Earnhardt also was at Pocono for his role on the Prime broadcast for the NASCAR Cup Series race Sunday.
“Lot of fun for me today,” Earnhardt said. “I missed the thrill of competition. I love broadcast, don’t get me wrong. But nothing compares to driving or just being part of the team. Being an owner doesn’t really deliver like this. This is a lot of fun.”
Earnhardt had his wife and two young daughters in tow with him as he made the celebratory walk to victory lane. Oldest daughter Isla Rose clutched the checkered flag while youngest Nicole Lorraine soaked in the scene from her dad's arms.
“I love that they just get to experience things about NASCAR,” Earnhardt said. “I had such a great time growing up as a kid in this sport, just running around here. I want them to have that opportunity and understand that this is a place where they could create opportunities for themselves down the road.”
The win continued a banner season for the NASCAR Hall of Fame driver — who swept two races at Pocono as a driver in 2014 — after JR Motorsports and reigning Xfinity Series champion Justin Allgaier qualified for the season-opening Daytona 500 and secured their Cup Series debut.
Earnhardt won two Daytona 500s, in 2004 and 2014, and 26 races overall.
His side hustle Saturday was made a bit easier with Zilisch behind the wheel. Zilisch, who turns 19 in July, raced to his second Xfinity victory of the season and third of his young career. He won his Xfinity debut last year at Watkins Glen International.
Earnhardt even pitched in during the race and tossed tires over the wall during pit stops.
“Midway through the race man, I was feeling it,” Earnhardt said.
Zilisch took the win down to the wire and finally passed Jesse Love with five laps left in the race. Love finished second.
“Dale Junior, not too bad on the box,” Zilisch said. “Pretty cool to have him up there. Getting him a 1-for-1 win as crew chief is pretty awesome.”
Even with the victory, it just might be one-and-done on the pit box for Earnhardt.
“I don't know that I see myself doing it again,” he said.
AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing
FILE - Hall of Fame driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. looks on prior to a NASCAR Cup Series auto race at Darlington Raceway, Sept. 3, 2023, in Darlington, S.C. (AP Photo/Matt Kelley, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.
West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.
Decisions are expected by early summer.
President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”
She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.
Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.
She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.
Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.
“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.
Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.
"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”
But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.
“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”
Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”
“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.
One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.
Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”
The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.
The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.
The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.
The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.
“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)
