WWW.VALLEYRECORD.COM10 • September 28, 2011 • Snoqualmie Valley Record

Marking first anniversary, DirtFish Rally School emphasizes

life-changing lessons

There’s dirty jobs, and then there’s what Bria Lund does.

Gray September clouds roll overhead as Lund details the last of the cars in a lineup of DirtFish Rally School’s fleet of sports sedans, making sure to scour the floors of caked soil.

“Usually my legs are covered in mud,” she says. “I get some stares.”

Instructors get the cars so dirty, “Sometimes, I feel like they do it on pur-pose,” Lund said. Still, she knows what she signed up for—the name, after all, is “DirtFish.”

It’s a messy task, but “I quite enjoy it,” Lund said. “I know it’s behind the scenes,

but it’s a well-needed job, so I’m happy to do it.”

The result of all this hard work is only temporary. Lund’s midday scrubdown, done during rally students’ lunch break, will be undone in a flurry of mud and gravel a few minutes from now. It’s an extra touch, part of DirtFish’s emphasis on the customer experience.

By finding spic-and-span Subarus that students can dirty all over again, “They know that we care for them,” Lund said.

Customer serviceThat attention to duty and detail is what

DirtFish President Ross Bentley calls “the wow factor.” DirtFish will mark its first year in business in October, a big and busy one.

In its first year in operation, DirtFish has seen more than 2,000 customers get behind the wheels of its Subaru sports

sedans. Vehicles have racked upwards of 6,000 miles in that year, without ever leaving Snoqualmie.

“The growth has been faster than any of us predicted,” Bentley said.

Rally car racing is a sport that has been big in Europe for years, but is just going main-stream in the United States. Differentiated from road or circuit racing, in which drivers race wheel to wheel at high speeds on closed tracks, rally takes place one car at a time, typically on gravel or dirt such as forestry roads. In circuit racing, the driver sees one turn hundreds of times. In rally, the driver sees a corner only once, then tears off to a new one.

Rally and the attendant sport of rallycross, or rally racing on a closed circuit, is growing in America thanks to the popularity of things like the X Games and video games.

Ride of your life

VALLEY PROFILEStaff Photo

Instructors and staff at DirtFish Rally School strive to give their customers a life-changing experience while learn-ing the fundamentals of rally driving.

Changing the game

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Photo by Sean McDonough SEE DIRTFISH, 22

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“Rally and rallycross are becoming the new road racing,” Bentley said. Young people who grew up playing games like “Colin McRae’s DIRT” can now do it in real life. “We’ve created a real-life video game for grown-ups.”

The idea of a rally car school isn’t unique. Two such schools already operate in Florida and New Hampshire.

DirtFish, though, is pioneering a new way to teach people to rally.

“We’re in the business of helping people feel alive,” Bentley said. “They come here and learn things that stretch them, that some-times are a little outside their comfort zone.”

“There is an absolute rush to it,” said customer Frank Conway. Manager of a high-risk driver-training program, Conway came all the way from Fredericksburg, Va., for an education in safe driving. He got that, but he also had a blast.

DirtFish’s business model has three parts. The first is aimed at the private individual who wants to learn how to drive a rally car. The second part is camps aimed at team-building activities for cor-porations. This past year, DirtFish held such camps for companies like T-Mobile, Google and Microsoft.

“It’s all about working together to solve a problem,” Bentley said. “They learn to communicate, trust each other and work as a team.”

The third portion of DirtFish’s model is military training for soldiers who want to learn how to drive in extreme situations.

Looking ahead, the business plans to gradually grow its con-sumer courses while massively expanding in the corporate team-building events and military-police training.

Adaptive ActionThis summer, DirtFish partnered with Adaptive Action Sports

to give wounded military personnel and other drivers with physical challenges a taste of the extreme.

Adaptive Action helps participant enrich their lives and show others that they can live beyond their limitations. Before DirtFish opened up the possibilities of motorsports, the group mostly used skateboard and snowboard facilities.

A two-day camp in July helped soldiers dealing with post-

traumatic stress disorder to rebuild their trust.Instructors sometimes need to adapt their own methods. Working with a driver who was deaf, “We had to come up with

hand signals in front of his face,” instructor Don Wooten said.DirtFish instructor Nate Tennis worked alongside Supercross

rider Chris Ridgway, who lost his leg in a motorcycle accident.“He drove incredibly well,” said Tennis. They had to improvise a

bit, but Ridgway’s prosthetic leg handled DirtFish’s two-leg power-sliding lessons—one foot pumps the gas while the other pumps the brake—with surprising skill.

“Sitting in the right seat and watching that happen just blew me away,” Tennis said.

Fueled team Much of the first year’s successes at the school can be ascribed

to the youthful vibe and commitment of the staff, and to the rally school’s Valley location.

From Jamie Billadeau, the office receptionist who can step in to help customers with last-minute auto emergencies, to Luke Wyrsch, the local guy whose day as a student turned into a job in the DirtFish auto shop, there are many examples of passion in this small staff.

“It’s an absolutely amazing place to work, hang out, everything,” said Billadeau, a motorsports nut herself.

DirtFish instructors and staff bring a mix of rally and race experience and people skills. DirtFish has also benefited from its Snoqualmie location, a half-hour drive from Seattle and with exist-ing hospitality and amenities.

“This place is incredible,” Wooten said. “I feel so lucky we have this property to play with, I mean, work out of.”

“Incredible” is also how Wooten describes his experience as one of DirtFish’s wingmen, guiding newcomers to the sport of rally.

“The coolest part of being in the right seat is feeling them ‘get it,’” he said. “When the car does what they ask it to do… they feel it and they’re able to reproduce it, it’s amazing. ‘Yeah, you’ve got it!’”

To Bentley, the most satisfying part of his job is seeing all the smiles, of his customers and staff.

“It’s an incredible workplace culture,” he said. The jobs are fun, but “not a single person is satisfied with where we’re at.”

• DirtFish Rally School is located at 7001 396th Dr. S.E., outside Snoqualmie. Learn more about the school at www.dirtfish.com.

DIRTFISH FROM 10

Top, Photo by Sean McDonough/Below, Staff Photo

Above, one of DirtFish’s Subaru WRX-STI rally cars tears it up on a gravel track. Below, DirtFish President Ross Bentley, left, and General Manager Greg Lund, stand next to a map of the course in the school building, a former lumber mill office.