Teams

The Buccaneer Biddys

Garage Headquarters: Oceanside, CA

Driver: Jolan Schmidt

Mechanics: Veronica Giancola, Debbie Colwell, Marlene Ortiz, Kathy Szeyller

Nuts and Bolts:

“We are an all-woman team, but more unique is that we all get along,” laughs Jolan “JoJo” Schmidt, captain of the Buccaneer Biddies. “Every year we strive for at least one ‘first’ – an adventure none of us have done.” JoJo explains that she met her racing teammates Debbie Colwell, Veronica “Ron Jon” Giancola, Marlene Ortiz, and Kathy Szeyller playing league softball many years ago. (“We bonded and the relationships lasted longer than our softball career.”) Now they have poker nights, travel together, and dress up every Halloween. In a quest to find this year’s “first,” JoJo had one of those it-sounded-like-a-great-idea-at-the-time moments and entered the Red Bull Soapbox Race. She’s getting her “first,” all right: despite the fact that the teammates have 240 years of life experience among them, not one has ever built or driven a soapbox car.

Yet there’s hope. The teammates once entered a three-hour “build a boat and race” event at Oceanside’s Harbor Days fair, and while they didn’t win, they didn’t sink, either. Maybe that’s because they know a little something about buoyancy. JoJo and Debbie are both executives at Custom X, a bodyboard company that Debbie founded. Hopefully the same savvy spirit that develops bodyboards coveted worldwide can also produce a viable soapbox design. In keeping with their pirate theme, the temporarily peg-legged teammates would love to belay their scurvy opponents and turn their “first” into First Place.