Monster Mutt Dalmatian Nation Fans Inspire Jolly On And Off The Track

By Scott Douglass
Aug 7, 2012

  So I’m catching up with Monster Mutt^® Dalmatian driver Candice Jolly and of course when talking with the energetic lady who drives one of the most popular Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam^® trucks currently in competition, to no surprise, the first subject we discussed was: her socks! You see a couple of years ago I profiled Jolly in this column and she disclosed that the exotic socks she wears are an important part of her game day attire. It seems that since I wrote about that part of her repertoire Dalmatian Nation fans everywhere want to see for themselves. “It’s amazing the way fans keep coming up to me at pit parties and asking to see my socks every time! They saw the article on MonsterJam.com so now they have to check them out for themselves,” Jolly told me. “It’s pretty awesome. You know it is something that I’ve been doing since I was a little kid; it’s just something fun that I’ve always done. It’s nice to see that the kids enjoy it. And I’ve actually had fans bring me socks at the shows! The other thing is my flowers. I have flowers in my truck. I have a whole daisy garden going on in there. It started with a fan bringing me a flower and I put it in my truck. It’s just kept growing and now there’s a whole garden in there. If you watch the World Finals television coverage or the DVD you can see it on the onboard camera.” Make no mistake about it; Candice does Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam in her own unique way, unlike anyone else on the circuit today. 

Jolly’s ability to create a personality for her monster jam truck, not to just drive the wheels off of it, has helped her build one of the biggest fan followings in the sport and has allowed Candice to create many Monster Mutt Dalmatian fan experiences that are exclusive to her and her popular machine. I mean come on, whoever would have thought of having a fashion show at the world’s largest Party in the Pits? That’s just what happened last March at Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam World Finals^SM XIII presented by NGK Spark Plugs. There on the main Double Down/Party in the Pits stage were dozens of young fans there with Jolly showing off their Monster Mutt Dalmatian outfits. It was so much fun, and Candice says that was just the beginning. “Yes, absolutely it’s going forward,” Jolly gushed. “It was an absolutely amazing experience. We had 40 little children on the stage in their homemade Monster Mutt Dalmatian costumes having so much fun, it was unbelievable. We just had a really great time with it. I had one little girl there who they had just let out of the hospital so she could be on stage. Her mother ended up having to carry her on to the stage but she was there. Again, they actually let her out of the hospital so she could come be a part of it. That’s just so amazing to me. Next year we are going to do it again. It’ll be even bigger. We’ll be there all day if we have to letting all of the kids get on stage to show off their costumes because it was so awesome the first year. I’m already getting kids contacting me through Facebook to register for next year. I told you, it is not your Daddy’s Monster Jam anymore.” Indeed. And that’s a great thing to see as the massive fan base of the sport continues to grow by leaps and bounds. 

It seems like just yesterday that this diminutive powerhouse came on the scene, but she now has several years of experience under her belt driving these one-of-a-kind mechanical marvels. So I asked Jolly to assess where she feels she is at as a driver and performer these days. “I am quite excited about my career. I am getting such a hang for driving that puppy,” Jolly exclaimed. “I’ve heard some drivers complaining that the Monster Mutt trucks are so hard to see out of, but I don’t know any different. All I have ever driven is a Mutt, and I don’t have any problems seeing out of it so that does not affect my ability to drive the truck. Like just about every driver I’d love to have even more seat time in the truck just because it’s nice to be able to practice which is something we don’t get much of. We get in the truck and we are in the show. So the more time you get the better you are. It’s nice to really know where your braking points are, to know how far you can push the truck. Some of the time I think that it’s harder with the China tires that I run because they don’t have a lot of grip, and I go up against these boys who are running the new tires from the Ukraine, guys running tires with full cleats, so there are times when I feel like I’m at a disadvantage because of the tires I run, sometimes not. Take Neil’s truck for instance (her fiancée, Neil Elliott drives for Team Maximum Destruction). It is built for mud. It’s built to handle a slick track. It’s got a locker; it’s got cleats, totally different from my truck. So I’d like to try some different set-ups sometimes, to see how some of those other set-ups work, but I think that I’m doing a good job with it. I feel like I drive to the best of my ability every time.”  

In talking with the enthusiastic Floridian I continued the conversation about how she feels about her on track performances now that she is more of a veteran, and while it’s clear she still loves to compete, it’s amazing how quick she returns the dialogue to some of the amazing off-track experiences she has with her fans. “I have to tell you though I love to race, I love to freestyle, but my favorite part of this whole job is being able to go to the children’s hospitals and to be able to put smiles on little kids faces,” Jolly admitted. “This year I’ve visited a children’s hospital in just about every city I was in and we did the Beads of Courage. The very first place I went to we passed out the beads and they all made me a necklace that said Candace on it and we kept going, I got to see so many kids, lots of them had three or four strings of beads. All of those medical procedures that they had gone through, it is so eye opening and you feel so much compassion for those kids and for those parents who have to deal with these illnesses. I am so completely blessed with a healthy baby boy and I didn’t have to deal with any of that stuff and I have so much compassion for them, they can’t bring their kids to see Monster Jam because their child is so sick and is in the hospital so we can bring a little of Monster Jam to them there in the hospital. It is an eye opening experience and makes you so grateful for what you have. This year in Vancouver there was a little boy who loves us so much but he was too sick to come to the event. So I went to the hospital to meet him. This little guy, five years old, he had not been out of bed in two weeks. He lifted up to see me and he was straining, trying to get up, trying to move up, he was really excited. Then when I was getting ready to leave he said ‘Miss Candice, if you win is it gonna be for me?” It was all I could do to get the word yes out of my mouth without tears rolling down my face. This poor little guy is dealing with so much yet all he wants to know is if I’m going to win for him. I’m tearing up right now just talking about it again. So once I left his room I’m walking down the hall, now I’m hysterically crying, and all the PR guys are asking if I’m OK. I just told them to hold on a needed a few seconds alone. The thing is I never would have thought in a million years that driving a giant puppy dog all over the world would put smiles on so many kids’ faces.” 

Those special times with her fans have become the most rewarding times for her and again she stressed that is the part she did not see coming. “I never thought this is what would happen,” Jolly recalled. “I got into this sport because of the 1,500 horsepower flying 30 feet in the air. Don’t get me wrong, I love all of that. I am a true gearhead. But I really love all the other things that we’ve been talking about. I have so many Dads who come up to me and tell me that they brought their daughters to Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam because their son wanted to come, and now their little girl wants to drive a monster jam truck after meeting me. Those Dads are like “thank you so much, now we can do this as a whole family with our little girl too. We can go racing, we can do this and do that”, they are just so excited and that’s another great part for me driving Monster Mutt Dalmatian. It is so awesome every time I’m in a pit party and hear a little girl come up to me and say “you’re my favorite, I want to grow up and be a driver like you.” I’m thinking ‘that’s perfect baby, we need all the girls that we can get in this sport.’ When this started I did figure that I would be a female role model for little girls but all of this has gone so far above and beyond what I ever expected. All the kids in the hospitals, all of the kids with Make A Wish, the reaction from so many kids at all of the Advance Auto Parts Monster Jams we go to all over the world, I never really expected it to be so amazing, I really didn’t.” That amazing special bond between popular driver Candice Jolly and her worldwide fan base is what fuels the incredible growth of the Dalmatian Nation, and you cannot miss all of the signs in the stands and the homemade costumes that so many of her fans to wear to every event where Candice and the Monster Mutt Dalmatian compete.