Teams

USC Phi Kappa Psi

Garage Headquarters: Los Angeles, CA

Driver: Chad

Mechanics: Ryan, Jason , Clark

Nuts and Bolts:

Team USC Phi Kappa Psi is on a mission, and that mission is – not surprisingly – to beat UCLA at the Red Bull Soapbox Race. As their team moniker implies, Ryan Arango, Clark Claydon, Jason Cuellar, Chad Greene, and Ben Waller are fraternity brothers at the University of Southern California, and they couldn’t possibly conceive of a better theme than the classic Trojans vs. Bruins rivalry.

The teammates are naturally competitive. They all play soccer, basketball, and lacrosse; but (don’t tell the group from UCLA) they’ve got a less aggro side too – they regularly volunteer at the Mary Lind Foundation, which provides residential substance abuse recovery services to homeless men and women throughout Southern California. The members of Team USC Phi Kappa Psi also have mad skills when it comes to building stuff: to a man, they’ve worked construction jobs and have erected buildings ranging from 5,000-square-foot houses to 130,000-square-foot plants. With their carpentry, welding, and engineering experience – not to mention the involvement of many more Phi Kappa Psi brothers behind the scenes – fabricating a Trojan chariot pulled by a submissive Bruin is no problem. And, thanks to the huge contingent of USC students expected to attend on race day, this crew is confident that the crowd will go wild when they play the Trojan fight song and roll their chariot to the starting line. “Our biggest challenge,” says Chad, the team’s captain, “is designing a steering mechanism that can handle our need for speed.”