Alex Mercado gives the Green Hornet a show-off run at Great Mills – The Bay Net photos by Sean Rice

For the third consecutive year, Larry Jarboe’s crew of students in the engineering club at Great Mills High School took home 1st place trophies from the annual National Electric Drag Racing Association (NEDRA) “Power of DC” competition.

The student group set quarter mile time records in 2004 and 2005 running the Green Hornet, an electric-converted Toyota MR2 owned by Jarboe, who is also a St. Mary’s County Commissioner.

 
A look into the trunk

In Hagerstown on the Mason Dixon Dragway on June 4, Alex Mercado (who is the only student with his license yet) raced the Green Hornet, and the club’s newest car, The Stang, to take home two more trophies.

“People from all over the country come to this,” Jarboe said of the NEDRA races. “And people always say, ‘you guys in St. Mary’s County, what are you doing down there?'”

The Green Hornet set two records in a high-voltage division in the last two years, and this year Mercado used the Hornet and the Stang to set records in the 144-volt E division, with the top times in the street and modified classes.

The Green Hornet is in the “street” class. It was Jarboe’s creation until it became the focus of the Engineering Club, where went to from a glorified golf cart to an electric dragster.

The Stang came to the group by chance this year, Town Creek Shop owner Jonathan Edwards (or the group’s “resident automotive genius” as Jarboe calls him) found the fully converted electric Ford Mustang for $300. The deal was a steal for a genius like Edwards; the car had thousands of dollars of conversion equipment already in place – but it had not been run in about nine years.

The Bay Net visited the Town Creek Shop in February; when Edwards and the group were ready to test drive the mustang after months of tinkering. The car ran, but it still had some bugs to work out.

The students didn’t have a name for their newest dragster. The Bay Net suggested “The Stang” and the name stuck.

The group gathered Thursday at the “Hornet’s Nest” at Great Mills High School, a mini barn right behind the school rigged to pick up solar energy. They showed off the Green Hornet and their trophies.

Next year Mercado will be back as a senior. Keith Stone will be sixteen in a month and plans to return to the club next year as a junior, as does Jake Bosse, 16.

Jarboe said the Green Hornet will probably run one more year in the club, and next year the group will be full speed ahead on a third car that is merely a frame at the Town Creek Shop.

So far Edwards has done most of the work on the new creation, but he has showed a couple of the guys how to use a welder in the process.

It’s a “rail” car Edwards explains. &