Only a few months into a hands-on build, and the cameras are rolling. A group of high school students is transforming a Harley-Davidson Nightster into a flat-track race bike, and as the clock ticks toward a June deadline, they’ve found themselves in the spotlight.
Racer Network, formerly MavTV, a premier motorsport broadcast and digital platform, has signed on to capture the 15 students at Tennessee’s LaVergne High School and their mentors as they push toward completion of the race bike.. The program is expected to air this fall.
Darcy Betlach, head of brand, creative and experiential marketing at Northern Tool + Equipment, the sponsor of “Legends Build: Student Challenge,” says Racer Network is the perfect venue for the students’ work. The channel offers an unparalleled lineup of live racing, documentary series, news and analysis, as well as car culture, bringing “high-quality, original programming to millions of fans worldwide.”
“The Northern Tool Legends Build was greenlit because the students at LaVergne High School and the skilled trades they’re learning are the future of motorsports,” she says. “The craft, the grit, the teamwork – that’s the story Racer Network tells best.”
Project progression
Jason Bowers, the career and technical education teacher at LaVergne who leads the students, said in late January that following the holiday break and delays due to unusual amounts of snowfall in their area, they were a little behind but catching up quickly.
Half the students were at that time working on a triangle stand to keep the deconstructed bike upright as they fabricate parts and attach them to the bike. Other students were fabricating a seat bar bracket. The design for a new gas tank, which is much smaller than the original tank, was also in progress.
While the camera crew is not on-site full-time, the filming process is time-consuming, as there are specific elements that need to be captured or recaptured, as well as interviews that eat into production time. It is one of the elements that makes reality television fun to watch, and despite these hurdles, Bowers says it is an awesome opportunity.
“We film everything,” he says. “When the camera crew isn’t here, we have a team member who is good with the cell phone film for us and do interviews. We’re super excited about it. It highlights the school and the program as well as local industry partners. It’s beneficial to us and everyone else involved.”
Students first
Industry experts play a central role in the build, stepping in as mentors throughout the process. Chief among them is Billy Lane, founder of the “Sons of Speed” motorcycle race and host of his own YouTube series about racing and building bikes. A local resident and veteran bike builder, Lane is the students’ go-to guide. Ronan Garrison, a junior at LaVergne, says he is especially thankful for Lane’s guidance, and that he is beginning to grow accustomed to the cameras.
“It was a little nerve-wracking at first,” he says, “but we’re all grateful to have the opportunity to be on TV. It’s something we can always go back to and show our children in the future.”
When asked to name specific challenges they have experienced, both Bowers and Garrison chuckle and mention in unison: “measure twice.”
“The experience for me and the whole team has really been amazing,” Garrison says. “We started off not knowing really anything about bikes. Now, we’ve started to understand how bikes work, who Billy Lane is and how special he is … he’s really patient with us. We have a bunch of questions all the time and he’s there to answer them.”
Leading by example
One of Bowers’ passions is promoting skilled trades and introducing America’s youth to training opportunities. If he were not so invested in teaching at LaVergne, he says he would probably be advocating nationwide for programs like the one he has at his school.
“We need them for our country to run,” he says of trade schools, “and for our world to run.”
Betlach agrees and says the “Legends Build: Student Challenge” can help inspire the next generation of high school career and technical education students.
“Our hope is this show will light a spark and encourage other students to explore careers in the trades as skilled tradespeople leading the next generation,” she says.
Betlach says the camera crew had already spent many hours in the shop embedded with the students, and that the “dynamic between the legends and the students comes through naturally. It isn’t staged. It isn’t scripted.”
The legends Betlach refers to include Lane, flat-track racing legends Scott Parker and Chris Carr, and racing legend Kyle Petty.
“From a production standpoint,” she says, “these kids made the job almost too easy. Their stories, their personalities, their work ethic – it’s all incredibly compelling. Honestly, our biggest challenge in editing won’t be, ‘how do we make this interesting?’ It’ll be, ‘how on Earth do we cut this down to just four episodes?’ The amount of powerful, emotional, honest footage we’ve captured could fill an entire season.”
Betlach adds that the production team is capturing more than the build – they are documenting the transformation of the students.
“You can actually see a student start to believe ‘I can do this. I belong here,’” she says. “That’ll be the heartbeat of this show. And it’s why this project feels so special.”
Learning the ropes
One of the perks of being chosen for this project is that LaVergne received a variety of donated tools, including a Baileigh tube bender. Betlach notes that one of the memories that stands out most to her is watching a student on the bender the first time.
“You can literally see the spark when they learn something new,” she says, “that instant where they go from unsure to confident. Those ‘click’ moments are monumental.”
The Baileigh tube bender, a bandsaw, a manual plasma cutter and a CNC plasma machine are also extensively used, Bowers says.
“They’re learning new skills and new techniques,” he says. “They get to use different tools that they don’t use in day-to-day class. There’s been a lot of skill building, some of which I am going to introduce into the regular classroom.”
The transformed bike is scheduled for a race at Billy Lane’s track, Tennessee National Raceway, on June 6. The series is expected to be released on Racer Network this fall.
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