“My hope at that time was to eventually go to NASCAR. So I signed with a team and started racing the CRA pro late model series. I did five to six races that season and finished top 10 in my first start,” Ferns explained. “In the fall of 2012, through connections, I ended up getting a test with Venturini Motorsports in an ARCA car. In November of 2012 we just happened to be out west on the USAC West Coast National midget swing. I flew to Charlotte and the test went well. After that we worked out a deal. I was only gonna be 17 and couldn‘t race the full season. We signed a deal to race seven races in 2013. A couple of those included dirt races, so I was excited about that.
“We were fast wherever we went that 2013 season. But we didn‘t have the results to show for it due to circumstances out of our control,” Ferns added. “It was a great learning experience. I put my name out there. I was so young. A part of me wishes I was little more mature. I was just so green when I did that.”
Sponsorship for an extended run in ARCA fell through prior to the 2014 season.
“It‘s no secret, but its pay to play in racing. Obviously, I‘ve been fortunate to race the cars that I have and the quality of cars that I have,” Ferns said. “Family and smaller sponsors can only get you so far. After that all fell through, may dad asked me what I wanted to do. I told him I wanted to go 410 winged sprint car racing on dirt. I had already dabbled in it a little bit at the end of 2010 when I was 14.”
With Kevin Besecker turning the wrenches, Ferns raced 410 sprint cars in 2014 and won a FAST feature at Southern Ohio Speedway. She switched teams the following season and was racing frequently when her path changed.
“After racing heavily through the midway point of the 2015 season, my dad told me it was time to focus on my education,” Ferns said. “It was time to go in a different direction in life at that point. It was a family decision. I didn‘t race the rest of the season, but I didn‘t quit racing. I‘ve never wanted to quit racing. It was just a matter of circumstances at that time in my life.
“The following season when Caleb Armstrong broke his leg, I returned for a handful of races subbing for the Armstrongs. My family had been good friends with the Armstrongs since my quarter-midget days.”
But racing was now playing second fiddle in her life.
“People always ask me what made you want to be an attorney? I never had any intentions or ambitions of going to college. But my parents (Jim and Linda Ferns) instilled in my siblings and I that we had to go to college. Racing was never an option. If I wanted to continue to race, I had to go to college.”
Ferns began her schooling at Ivy Tech Community College before transferring to Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Mich., where she earned a degree in finance and economics.
“When I transferred to Grand Valley one of the prerequisites for my business degree was a business law class,” Ferns explained. “The irony of this is the first two weeks of class my professor was like, ‘If anybody‘s interested, Michigan State University partnered with Grand Valley to do this business law three-year program where you spend three years at Grand Valley. Then instead of your senior year at Grand Valley, you go to Michigan State Law School and they‘ll contribute the credits to your undergrad degree.‘
“I laughed to myself because I didn‘t even want to go to college, let alone law school,” Ferns continued. “Two weeks later I was in the professor‘s office asking about this Michigan State 3-in-3 program because I was so obsessed with business law class. That‘s kind of how it all started, the start of the whole legal ambitions.”
In addition to her degree from Grand Valley State, Ferns has earned a Master of Business Administration degree from Wayne State University and is enrolled in Wayne State University Law School. Since 2018, Ferns has worked at The Sam Bernstein Law Firm as an operations manager.
“One day in early 2019 I was at work at the Sam Bernstein Law Firm, which is one of the sponsors on my car, and I randomly texted my dad,” Ferns explained. “I said, ‘Can we think about getting a USAC Silver Crown car, I need to get back in the seat.‘ He read it and said, ‘I know.‘ It had been three years since I‘d been in a race car and I was ready to get back after it.”
A few months later her parents acquired the same sprint that she had driven when she was 14 years old.