Somerset High School team competing on national stage at Texas Motor Speedway

SOMERSET, Ky. (FOX 56) — In a few weeks, students across the state will return to the classroom, but some high school students are competing on a national stage right now.

The Somerset Solar Jumpers are one of 27 teams from nine states competing in the 32nd Solar Car Challenge.

The competition, though, didn’t start when the team arrived in the Lone Star State last week; it has been months in the making.

Over a week, the team of 13 students is competing with the best of the best, but it isn’t as simple as driving as fast as you can around the track.

“There’s three days’ worth of scrutineering process,” explained recent Somerset High School graduate John Lackey. “Scrutineering is kind of like where judges scrutinize all the cars they have. All the cars have to pass certain checkpoints, like mechanical and electrical checkpoints, to make sure the cars are safe to compete and abide by all the different rules. And then the race itself is four days, and it’s an endurance-based race. So, it’s not how fast you can go; it’s how many laps you can accumulate over four days.”

The Jumpers are competing in the Electric Solar Division.

Over the last several months, the team has been designing and building its solar-powered car from the ground up.

Whether the students were familiar with the building or not at the start, they caught on quickly.

“I’ve learned a lot about the mechanical systems of the car, how solar power kind of works, and relationship with the car, and also just how to use different tools and how to work with my hands physically,” Lackey said.

I got the chance to ride in the car before the team headed out to Texas, and safe to say, the Jumpers know what they’re doing.

“It’s a really unique opportunity to be able to do something like this,” Lackey described. “I mean, before I came into high school, I’d never even heard of a solar car program. It is a very unique opportunity that we’ve been able to do and build different engineering skills. It’s helped expose me to engineering, and beyond that, I think, because it is such a complicated process, because there’s a lot of work you do. I have built very good connections with people.”

But for Lackey, this experience hasn’t just taught him engineering skills; it’s also taught him people skills because, in order to go to Texas, the team needed community support.

“Being able to do presentations and do different public speaking and asking people for money, ask people from and then building connections with the community,” Lackey detailed. “There’s a lot to that besides just building physically building the car. There’s a lot that goes into it; it’s a large process.”

Wednesday is the final day of racing, and for the Jumpers, while they want to win, their main goal is to complete around 495 laps; that’s the number they’ve determined their car can do over the four days. If they hit that number, this opportunity will have been a success.