BOISE — For 10 students at Borah High School, life is lived a quarter mile at a time.

A Thursday car show at Borah High School featured a range of vehicles including an Acura NSX, a vintage Corvette Stingray and a modern Ford Mustang Shelby GT500. The focus, however, was on the several high schoolers getting their commuter cars ready for the racing season. For Borah’s drag racing team, the show served as a recruitment opportunity for the club, which has its first of four race days for the season this Saturday at the Firebird Raceway.

The only requirements for prospective racers are a current driver’s license and a car that can pass inspection and, if you’re not looking to pay for race entry fees, the ability to work concessions at the school’s basketball games.

Aeron Chapman, a junior at Borah High School and the team’s treasurer and secretary, said she first heard of the drag racing team while scrolling through the school’s extracurricular offering.

“My first thought was that seems really dangerous for high schoolers,” Chapman said beside her 1993 Jeep Cherokee. “But after getting my parents on board and fixing my car I was able to race. I just kind of stuck with it, but I really love it.”

Races for the high school teams use a staggered start system, where each individual sets a time with their vehicle and tries to get as close as possible without going too fast or too slow, or getting disqualified by jumping the start.

“You don’t need a fast car, you don’t need a fancy car,” Dan Blanc, a Borah alumnus and team advisor, said. “You just need to be consistent.”

The slower car is sent off the line first while the second car is given the green light when the time difference is passed that — assuming a perfect reaction from both drivers — would put both vehicles at the finish line at the same time. Reaction time, however, isn’t perfect, Madeline Griffin, a junior at Borah and the team’s president, said.

“A lot of the time that’s what it comes down to — reaction time,” she said. “That’s how people win or lose.”

Blanc said the school has had a drag racing team at Firebird Raceway — which is owned by Borah High School alums — since the early 1980s. Blanc’s involvement with the team began in 2014, the year the club restarted following a five-year hiatus after prior leadership left, he said.

During Blanc’s time as advisor, the club claimed the state champion title in 2018 and 2019 in competition against high schools in southwestern Idaho and eastern Oregon. Though other schools in the Boise Valley used to be involved in the competition, Borah’s team is the only remaining drag racing team in the area, Blanc said.

“All the high schools had a drag team at one time, but … people change,” Blanc said. “Habits change, and parents don’t want their kids drag racing, they don’t think it’s safe — all that stuff plays into it.”

Borah’s team has persisted, however, and now stands at 10 members large. Alex Tice, a junior at Borah and the team’s vice president, said that the membership is largely the result of friends pulling each other in as well as a technical interest in cars that, in his case, was partly fostered through the Dennis Technical Education Center (DTEC), which provides job training programs for high schoolers interested in a number of technical vocations.

“We’re all kind of car kids,” Tice said. “Some of us go to classes over at DTEC. I’m an automative technology student along with collision repair.”

There’s also a social value to the team as well, Tice said. While many in the group have packed schedules that afford little time to get together outside of school, the club — and race days to be specific — offer on opportunity to chat with friends or even play UNO while they wait for their turn to race, he said.

Tice said he is working to have his 1990 Honda Prelude ready next season to race for his senior year.

Steven Moore, Borah High’s school resource officer of three years who advises the team along with Blanc, said racing has been a part of his whole life. Though he lost touch with his love for hot rods with family and professional obligations, the club at Borah serves as a way to both strengthen his connection to the student population and relive some of his childhood, he said.

Moore hosts team meets once a week during the season to discuss the upcoming events, giving an opportunity for team members to approach him with questions about how to fix up their cars and otherwise get them race-ready. Questions aren’t always limited to racing, however, and he also lends an ear to students looking for input regarding what’s happening at home or school.

“I’m there for them for that kind of stuff, too,” Moore said.

In some cases, the club has served as a way to make inroads with students who might be making some “questionable choices” on the roadways. By getting them engaged in the club, the students are able to have their racing desires met in a way that is legal and facilitated with professional instruction, Moore said.

Madeline Griffin, a junior at Borah High School and president of the school’s drag race team, said she learned about cars through her dad, who paints vintage vehicles. In 2020 she got ahold of a 1967 “Baja Bug” Beetle — named for its off-road modifications — that was destined for the scrapyard. With the help of her dad, she was taught how to paint the car and the two worked through repairs that entailed building and rewiring just about everything outside of the engine, she said. After four years, the project was complete and, as soon as she arrived at Borah High School, Griffin heard about the drag racing club and immediately went to try it out.

While attending the first race of the season, she met Blanc and the former club president, the latter being the only other member in attendance. Without a present challenger (Chapman and Tice had joined the club but were not there for the first race), Griffin was made president.

“I’ve been to every race since,” she said.