[blues rock with electric guitar] It's been said countless times that the wheels on the bus go round and round.

- Ellajanski: It's kind of chaotic at first.

- But on a Saturday evening in New Richmond, Wisconsin... - Dominic Harker: You never know what's about to happen.

- Angela: The wheels on these buses go crash, bang, boom.

[rock music, loud engines] - Dominic Harker: It's kind of just hold your foot to the floor and pray that everything goes right.

- Named Battle of the Buses, this part-race, part-demolition-derby has become an annual tradition at Cedar Lake Speedway.

- Brad Both: Only happens once a year and you can only see it this one time.

So, it's really fun.

- Teams are given the task of retrofitting old, donated school buses into mean, sometimes green, smashing machines.

- Announcer yelling: Here we go!

- Trace: Oh, my God.

[spraying aerosol] - And it's only fitting that the people these buses were designed to transport make up the crews assigned with their destruction.

- Trace: There's a lot of people working on this bus and a lot of, like, younger students.

- Angela: That's right.

Outside of the drivers, the teams for each bus are made up almost entirely of high school students.

- Grant: That's pretty cool.

[electric guitar riffs, pounding hammer] - Brook Reyzer: We strip it all out.

So, first things to come out are all the seats, all the windows, the side paneling, the roof, the insulation.

- At St. Croix Central High School, the opportunity to work on the buses provides a chance for some kids to switch gears and try something new.

- Peter Nusbaum: They got to do some wiring.

They're working on the engine.

They're doing some tuning.

Probably be a stack coming out of this hood probably after this weekend, or so.

[angle grinder howling] - Ellajanski: I had never used angle grinder before, and I just got handed to it and did it.

- About 40 miles north, at Unity High School, students are getting their own bus ready.

- Jake Lee: As soon as they see the bus is in, they run to my room pretty much and say, "When are we working on the bus?

When are we working on the bus?"

[whirring] - The buses compete in three races throughout the event.

The first two races are all about speed.

[pulsing electric bass, electric guitar, and drums] - Jake Lee: It seems like you're going a lot faster than you actually are.

Going around a dirt track around the corners, it seems like I'm gonna tip over.

But the kids, when they talk to me afterwards, they're like, "Why were you going so slow, Mr. Lee?

You're only going like 35."

I'm like, "No way, I wasn't going 35.

I was going a lot faster than that."

[bus slams into another bus] - The third race is all about strength.

- Jake Lee: It's not fun if we're just racing around a track.

Nobody wants to see a bus race around a track.

They want to see us smash into people, tip over, all that kind of stuff.

- Announcer: Over there, turn three, whoa!

[crowd cheers] - Dominic Harker: The definition turns like a dump truck is true in this circumstance.

- Jake Lee: My strategy is, I tell the kids, I don't want this bus to be running by the end of the race.

[adrenaline-filled electric guitar] - For these students, when it comes to high school milestones, there's Battle of the Buses, and everything else is a distant second.

- Jake Lee: One year, we had the prom the same night as the bus race, and so a lot of the kids were upset about that and had to make this big choice on, "Am I gonna go to the prom or am I gonna go to the bus race?"

There were several dates that were a little upset that they chose the bus race over the prom, so... - Angela: And like prom, race night promises to be a night they'll likely never forget.

[punchy snare drum] - Brook Reyzer: Most of the time, I'm not even watching the track, but I'm watching these kids and I'm watching their families' faces.

I'm watching the littles, you know, look at these high school kids and dream about doing this someday.

[fireworks sizzle] [booming] [crackling] Brook Reyzer: The whole full cycle is something you can't describe.

[fireworks fizzing] [crackling] [snapping, buzzing] [popping]