Great time with High School kids today...

I have worked a deal where my new sponsor, an auto body shop, will be working with our local high school auto classes to put a new paint job on the dragster. The school's graphic design kids will come up with a scheme, and the shop kids, under the supervision of the sponsor, will apply the paint and graphics. When it's all done we will have an article in the paper describing the partnership that gets real world experience for the kids. The shop teacher looks progressive, the sponsor gets free ink, and I get a new color.

To get the kids excited about it, I took the car to the school today and gave a presentation to 4 periods of auto shop kids. There were actually kids from all kinds of classes there, with their teachers. I went over a description of the car, the procedure of executing a pass down the strip, comparisons to other vehicles, showed them a video of the car making a pass and then as a grand finale for each class we backed the car out in the parking lot and fired it up. A little warmup and a few whacks of the throttle and the kids fell about the place. They loved it. After I shut the car off each time I would ask an automotive question and the first kid to answer it got to sit in the car and get their picture taken.

After the day was over the shop teacher told me he had hosted presentations by all 4 branches of the military, and a never ending string of colleges, but had never had the attendance or the excitement he had today.

All in all it was funner than hell, and the kids were jacked up over it. It was a good day.

-Brian

 

Thats awesome! that is one way to ensure the life of our beloved sport will live on for at least another generation.

 

We have done that many times. It is always the same response.
I am surprised more people don't offere to take the car and the sponsors advertisements into the schools for "say no to drugs" days and the like. Those handouts, (and the sponsors logos plastered all over them) will not get thrown away for years by those kids.
That is a cool deal you are doing though. Good luck with it.