A Boilermaker fan cave dedicated to the Purdue Grand Prix
Travis Iles, who won the 2009 Purdue Grand Prix while driving a Sigma Chi go-kart, sits in the fraternity’s garage that he helped raise funds to build. (Purdue University photo/Kelsey Lefever)
In his Purdue-themed workout room, Travis Iles displays numerous race mementos, including his 2009 winner’s trophy
The typical Purdue fan cave likely features a few staple items. Old sports memorabilia. Campus photographs that hold personal meaning for the owner. Lots of old gold and black.
The Boilermaker-themed workout room in Travis Iles’ home in Columbus, Ohio, has all those things, but with a twist. Most of the adornments relate to a specific campus event that greatly impacted his Purdue experience and postcollege life: his four years spent driving a Sigma Chi go-kart in the Purdue Grand Prix.
Iles (BS industrial management ’10) is tremendously proud of the oversized winner’s trophy displayed in the corner of the room, a prize he received in 2009 after leading for the final 120 laps of the 160-lap race. But he also looks at the display box full of race mementos and celebratory photos with his parents and fraternity teammates and thinks back on the life lessons and long-standing friendships he gained through those years competing in “The Greatest Spectacle in College Racing.”
“I was involved in a lot on campus, but I would say the Purdue Grand Prix was definitely something really special to me,” Iles says. “If I think about the guys that I’m still friends with today, it’s almost like a subset of the fraternity. We’re all Grand Prix guys who spent so much time dedicated to a common goal.
“We learned a lot and raised the money and busted our knuckles. We just had a bunch of guys that were real passionate about it, and that’s why we’re still close today. My crew chief (Sheldon Alt) was the best man in my wedding, and I was his.”
Iles and his Sigma Chi teammates completed a successful four-year run at the Grand Prix, improving from an 11th-place finish while operating on a shoestring budget during his freshman year to becoming true championship contenders in each of the next three. He was leading the race as a sophomore before blowing an engine. (“Six-dollar part,” Iles recalls with a laugh. “That’s how it always is.”) He stalled on the grid as a junior before racing his way back to fifth place. And then fortune finally turned in his team’s favor in the 52nd running of the race.
“We were really fast all those years. My senior year, everything just kind of went right,” he says. “We took the lead on lap 40 or something and just never looked back.”
By winning the race, Iles earned an opportunity to serve as an honorary starter for an Indianapolis 500 practice session on May 15, 2009 — and he got to invite his dad and some friends to join him at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway that day.
That was one of many post-Grand Prix bonding experiences for the group of friends, who frequently returned to campus in the years after graduation for an informal homecoming on Grand Prix weekend. Because the race was such a cherished memory, they also worked to pay it forward to the next generation of Sigma Chi racers.
Their race team had to rent shop space during Iles’ junior and senior years while their fraternity house was being renovated, which created numerous logistical challenges. So he and his crew chief, Alt, decided to spearhead a campaign to build a permanent facility for the Sigma Chi team and help with other fundraising efforts even today.
“That actually is even more of an important legacy for me, that our names are on the outside of the garage. I’ve got a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old, and when we go back, we can show them, ‘This is Daddy’s go-kart shop,’” Iles says.
While most of the memorabilia in Iles’ Purdue-themed room centers around his Grand Prix experience, it’s not entirely race-related. For example, there is a plastic photo cutout of his daughter Georgia that was displayed alongside thousands of other Boilermaker fans’ photos in the bleachers at Ross-Ade Stadium during the pandemic-impacted 2020 football season. There is also a plywood Motion P logo that his dad made as a decoration for the 2013 wedding between Travis and his wife, Tracey (BA public relations and advertising ’10), whom he began dating at Purdue.
Boilermaker ties run deep on both sides of Travis and Tracey’s family, as Travis’ mom and Tracey’s parents, sister and grandfather are also Purdue alumni. In fact, Tracey’s mom, Lisa (Ross) Todd, was once the Girl in Black featured twirler in the Purdue “All-American” Marching Band and serves as a band board member today. These connections only deepen their affection for their alma mater.
“Both my wife and I and our entire family have strong and warm emotions about the time there,” he says. “When so much life happens on a piece of ground, I think that you have this immediate kind of connection to that place.”
And then there are the practical lessons he gained at Purdue that helped him build a career as a district sales manager at Abbott. Iles acknowledges that he certainly benefited from the world-class education available at Purdue, but he also recognizes how his time in West Lafayette helped him build essential skills for a career in medical sales.
He learned how to engage with people from many different walks of life as a Boilermaker student. And all those hours spent scraping together the roughly $10,000 his Sigma Chi team needed each year to keep their kart running? It turns out they helped him land his first job.
“I’ll never forget my interview for Abbott, which was in the Purdue Memorial Union. The interviewer’s question was something like, ‘What makes you think you can go and sell?’ and I was like, ‘Once you’ve been selling fraternity go-kart racing to small businesses in Lafayette, you can sell anything.’ And he kind of got a kick out of that,” Iles says. “But that’s the truth. Being persistent and being somebody that people are willing to meet with, that’s a big part of it. And that’s what we were doing when we were 20 and 22.”
Both my wife and I and our entire family have strong and warm emotions about the time there. When so much life happens on a piece of ground, I think that you have this immediate kind of connection to that place.
Travis Iles
BS industrial management ’10
