Not long ago, a Wisconsin-based race car driver went to college.

His name was Paul Menard. The school was Wisconsin-Eau Claire, a liberal arts college closer to Minnesota than most of Wisconsin. One day Menard told a professor that he was leaving town for the weekend to do what he was good at: racing.

The professor said he’d see Menard the next week. He never returned.

That same professor told the story to Aaron Telitz, a rookie USF2000 driver and native of Eau Claire who is in his junior year at university.

“I remember going to my professor and telling him I’m trying to be a professional race car driver and that I’d miss a couple of classes,” Telitz said. “He said ‘Ok, you have to promise that you’ll come back.’ ”

Telitz did come back. He now pursues a Geography Information Systems degree, though that wasn’t his first choice.

“I went into college thinking was going to be a marketing major because that sounds like a good thing to go on with racing, you do a lot of marketing,” said Telitz.

Telitz isn’t the only Mazda Road to Indy driver who has simultaneously received an education both on and off the track. Others include Pro Mazda driver Scott Hargrove and Indy Lights rookie Matthew Brabham, who experienced high school life in British Columbia and Australia, respectively, and are solely focused on their racing careers.

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All three drivers attended schools where they were the only students establishing careers on racing circuits. Both Hargrove and Brabham described a disconnect between themselves, their peers and even teachers.

“The hardest part was the teachers don’t understand what you do. They kind of compare you to someone who plays football for fun, or for school,” Brabham said.

Others Brabham’s age didn’t always grasp what was entailed.

“They’re not very impressed. They’re like, ‘What do you mean? Do you race billy carts down a hill or something?’ I don’t think anybody gets a really good picture until they come to a race and see what we go through as drivers.”

Establishing a career in auto racing is different from the more traditional sports. While many school athletic teams have the luxury of playing games on campus or at a nearby school, students who decide to follow a racing path must travel to distant tracks, many times in different states, in order to compete.

“I actually had to take a break from racing in my last year of school to make sure I graduated,” said Brabham, who recently graduated from high school. “A lot of the racers I was racing against in Australia were all just dropping out of school because racing became too hard to balance.”

For Hargrove, being behind in curriculum by weeks after traveling for races was a frequent obstacle.

“It’s difficult because you show up to class and everybody knows what’s been going on for last two weeks and you’re the only one that doesn’t know,” Hargrove said. “Then going over to my buddy’s house to look at notes and catch up on my own time was the hardest part.”

As with any other sport, forging a racing career takes time and dedication. But the high school calendar only allots so much space. Telitz is currently taking online courses, but that’s after starting out with on-campus classes to start college.

“My sophomore year … I didn’t start racing Skip Barber until the summer, so I didn’t miss any school for that,” Telitz said. “The year following that, 2013, I decided instead of going to college and trying to race to take a year off of college to focus on racing and getting a proper budget to pursue my racing career more fully.”

When he was taking classes in person, Telitz said he’d miss three or four classes a month. That was far more manageable than his time in high school.

“In high school when I was go-kart racing, and you have classes every day in high school, every time I had to go somewhere I was missing a whole bunch of classes,” Telitz said.

Hargrove graduated from Surrey Christian Secondary School last year, even though he estimates he missed half the days of his senior year. However, the challenges in that also brought an extra sense of responsibility.

“Having your peers look at you as a role model, making sure you’re doing things the right way and presenting yourself in a good manner,” Hargrove said.

Telitz, 22, has observed younger drivers and sees a trend with the racers of the future.

“I see this huge youth movement where all of these kids are 16 or 15 years old and they’re racing cars I just started racing,” Telitz said. “I see them and they have to try and be so mature at such a young age and they don’t get to be a kid and go to a lot of high school events.”

Telitz encourages younger drivers to not “worry about taking racing too seriously” during their high school years. He says it’s a lot easier to focus on racing once they’ve graduated.

“In high school you might be distracted by it or sometimes your parents want you to race more than you want to. I guess I see that sometimes in kids, too,” Telitz said.

While Brabham and Hargrove have both feet in the racing world right now, they haven’t given up the idea of furthering their education. Brabham was curious enough that he looked into programs at IUPUI in Indianapolis, which has its own motorsports engineering program.

For Hargrove, the days spent catching up on schoolwork at a friend’s house not only helped him finish high school but also ensured he’d have a chance to pick up college textbooks when he felt the time was right.

“To actually maintain my grades and get good grades so that I can leave my options open for going to college in the future, it took a lot of extra work. Pretty much all of my down time was devoted to catching up in school or getting ready for the next race,” Hargrove said.

Hargrove’s simple advice to aspiring race car drivers, even though it takes a lot of effort? Stay focused.

“I do want to continue my schooling later on. But with my time constraints right now, it’s not really a good option for me,” Hargrove said. “I think everybody needs to keep those doors open.”