Kleyn, Plybon Earn Top-10 Finishes at Snowball Derby

PENSACOLA, Fla. (Dec. 8, 2025) — It was a marathon weekend for the 58th running of the Snowball Derby which due to rain was not decided until Monday, Dec. 8 with Stephen Nasse winning.

Notable for the regional were the finishes of a pair of of former Northwest Super Late Model Series champions, Kasey Kleyn and Hayden Plybon who claimed top-10 finishes in this who’s who race on the Five Flags half mile.
Kleyn, from Ephrata and the 2024 NWSLM champ, finished all 300 laps and was fourth. Kleyn was 3.821 seconds off the lead.

Spokane’s Plybon finished ninth, up from 12th in 2024 and was the last car on the lead lap — 10.34 seconds off the lead.

Another Northwest entrant was Kole Raz from Lake Oswego, Ore. who finished 24th.
Tom Plybon, Haeden’s father, provided some background on the time spent in normally sunny Florida.
“Normally, there’s a big qualifying day on Fridays for the super late, but that was rained out and pushed to Saturday,” he wrote in Facebook Messenger.

“So we ended up qualifying both the super late and the Pro late Saturday by the time we were done with all of that it started raining again. They had to dry the track and then we took the green flag in the Pro Late 2:30 AM.”
The super late race was supposed to kick off Sunday afternoon, Plybon added. Teams then went through all the introductions and the national anthem and then the fog set in on a wet race track so they canceled the race and ended up running Monday.

Nasse claimed his first Snowball victory and earning the $50,000 first-place prize. The event featured top short-track drivers and NASCAR stars from across the nation.