By T. Scott Boatright
The Ruston Bearcat Motorsports team is hoping for an electrifying weekend as advisor/sponsor Randall Elliot and his students travel to San Antonio for the The Alamo City Electrathon.
This event is exclusive to students enrolled in academic institutions with a STEM curriculum, such as Ruston High School.
The Alamo City Electrathon is a National Sanctioned Electrathon Event with Electrathon America, one of approximately 12 in the nation. It’s a one-hour endurance event for single passenger electric powered cars using 73-pound lead acid batteries.
During the event, teams will go through a series of electrical, mechanical, driver, and dynamic inspections. The teams will participate in two one-hour races, the team with the most laps combined from the two races wins.
“Teams start off with the same amount of energy, and whichever team makes the most laps wins,” Elliott said. “So it’s all about what car is the most efficient and fastest wins the race. Races have different criteria about how they set up the pole position and that kind of thing.”
Elliot said the RHS team built a brand-new car this year completely made out of carbon fiber and will race that along with the car the team built and raced last year.
“So in the first semester the students designed, built and have been doing practice runs for the race,” Elliott said. “It’s a pretty impressive group of students to just be able to do that in 18 weeks, even with some returnees to the team from last year.”
There are 23 students on the Ruston Bearcats Motorsport team and all will make the trek to compete in San Antonio.
“We’ll take the whole group,” Elliott said. “With two cars being raced at the same time, we have to have people spotting on the track and talking to the drivers. It involves a lot of people to get the job done.”
Students wishing to join the team can apply in their freshman year to become a member during their sophomore year.
“The team is a mixed bag of sophomore, junior and senior members,” Elliott said.
Elliott said that there’s a lot more at stake for competitors than only winning a race. Being a Bearcat Motorsports team member can help go far in deciding a student’s future.
“I’ve had several parents tell me the scholarships their kids have gotten have been based solely on the fact they were part of the team and gained real-world experience because of that,” Elliott said. “I’ve had kids get to the military academies, and one thing those institutions told the students and their parents is that they were for real-world experience. It’s been a deciding factor for a lot of colleges offering scholarships to our students. If you have two students with high ACT scores but only one has the real-world experience like the Bearcat Motorsports Team offers, then that student is the one the colleges tend to pick.”
Surprisingly to some, not all of the team members are all that mechanically inclined.
“Our team has a pretty strong social media presence, and some of the members just focus on that aspect of things,” Elliott said. “Some others run the business end of things. They help find sponsors and people who donate to the program. At the Shell competition, how well you handle social media and market your race team is a part of being judged.”
While the San Antonio event will be an “electrathon,” the Bearcat Motorsports Team still works with gas-powered vehicles as it has since the program began.
“We still build gas cars for the Shell Eco Marathon,” Elliott said. “The last two years that event was canceled because of COVID. That’s an international competition, and we’ve always done well there. So we’re also working to get ready for that competition that will take place in April.
“We’ll have a street-legal electric car and a gas-powered car. So throughout the year, we’re basically working on four cars. Every single year we build a brand new car, so yes, it can get kind of hectic. But it’s also amazing to watch what these kids can do.”
