thesportswire.net

Longtime Carolina dirt racing announcer Duane Goins, a lively and loquacious personality behind the microphone as the booming Mouth of the South, died Friday, two days after suffering a stroke. He was 74.

His passing at a Gastonia, N.C., hospital was reported by sister, June McNamara, who recalled a brother who played with toy cars as a boy and never lost his love for watching cars go around racetracks, turning into a career of announcing at racetracks throughout the Carolinas and Georgia including Cherokee Speedway in Gaffney, S.C., and Gastonia's Carolina Speedway.

Goins, also a regional racing historian and occasional promoter, was lovingly remembered by the Gaston County Shrine Club, which frequently had Goins announce its annual Shrine 100.

“For generations of race fans, Duane was one of the unmistakable voices of local short-track racing,” the Shrine Club posted on its Facebook page, adding that he “spent a lifetime surrounded by the sights, sounds and people of motorsports. … his voice will forever be woven into the sounds of Carolina Speedway and the history of the Shrine 100.”

Single with no children, Goins was a companion to his father Buren Lee Goins before his 2022 death. The younger Goins was a 2021 inductee into the Carolina Speedway Hall of Fame.

Visitation is 2-4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 19, at Sisk-Butler Funeral Home in Bessemer City, N.C.