On October 24, 2024, the Benton Central Supermileage Club had its first official meeting of the year. This marked the start of an awesome new year for the club, and many first-years showed interest in Supermileage.
The Supermileage Club started in 2010 when John Weitlauf partnered with Scott Robertson to start Benton Central Supermileage. The club was small initially, and they did not build a car in their first year. Yet with more student interest and involvement, the club evolved beyond super-mileage into motorsports entirely.
“When I was in college at Purdue; I volunteered as an official at a super mileage event…” Weitlauf replied when asked how he first got the idea of a super mileage club. ‘Second year [of teaching], I got to know Mr. Robertson a little better. [I] Kind of realized he and I jived, and we had complementary skillsets to be able to actually run a functional team,”
“I first participated in Supermileage when I was student teaching here,” Woessner stated in an interview regarding how he first found out about the club “[It] was a totally optional thing; [I] didn’t have to, but it was neat,”
The Benton Central Supermileage Club is not just about building vehicles for motorsports, though. The club actively seeks students with all skills, from business to computer science, and modeling. The Supermileage Team makes room for anyone and everyone who can bring fresh perspectives to the club. “We run it more like a business than a club. There’s all those different aspects, and people have to come together to make the thing actually happen…” Weitlauf answered about the club’s daily activities. “Getting students to understand interpersonal relationships, getting kids to understand communicative skills, getting kids to understand fundraising. Getting kids to understand that it’s not all about, like, building a car and turning wrenches. Right? Like, that’s like eight percent of what it [the club] is,”
“What do we hope to accomplish? As always, bring home trophies, right? We really want to make the 6A car – the three-digit car – we want to break that thousand miles per gallon cap…” Woessner replied when asked about the club’s goals for this year. “Personally, we’ve had a project kind of on-and-off for a little while to try and do some data collection,”.
The club has much planned for this new year. From garnering sponsorships to fund the club, to preparing the vehicles for the this year’s competition. The BC Supermileage team has got a lot of work this year, but a lot of talented students to bring these goals to reality.
