Local teacher adapts reality TV concept into team-building events


August 17, 2007 7:37 AM

People on State Street on Wednesday might have noticed a large cluster of men and women dressed in costumes, cheering and spraying each other with giant water guns.

If you did, you witnessed the work of a business that organizes group events patterned off of "The Amazing Race" reality television show.

La Cumbre Junior High School gym teacher Brian Sharp has a side job adapting these contests on a smaller scale into a business he has called The Ultimate Race (www.sbultimaterace.com).

Mr. Sharp applied to be a contestant on the CBS Network show, where teams of two race around the world and have to complete challenges to move on for a shot at winning the ultimate prize of $1 million.

"When he didn't make it on the show, he thought, 'I'll just do one myself,' " said Jared Ingram, assistant manager of The Ultimate Race. "Brian spent months planning a race for 12 of our friends, and it was so good we said, 'You should get paid to organize these.' "

In the past two years, Mr. Sharp has organized about 15 races, mostly in Santa Barbara , beginning with word of mouth and lately expanding through advertisements.

"I charge $1,500 for a half-day race for 35 people, and I add $300 for every 10 people past that," Mr. Sharp said.

With larger groups, he hires staff to help manage the race. "Usually I hire my friends on their days off, but the times I did jobs outside Santa Barbara , the races were for youth groups who had their own staff to help me."

Mr. Sharp organizes different races depending on the group or location. He has races with beer-tasting challenges for bachelor parties, scavenger hunts for bachelorette parties, solving math problems to get the combination for a safe, and other physical and trivia obstacles that must be overcome to get clues.

The race Mr. Sharp organized for the 80-person staff of Goleta-based Bargain Network Inc. on Wednesday was the largest he had ever hosted.

"We try to organize lots of team-building activities for the company, trying to keep work fun," said Dina Clapinski, Bargain Networks' director of human resources. "Brian assigned the teams two weeks in advance, so people got really into it, wearing team colors to the office and trash-talking at lunch."

Beginning at De la Guerra Street , the teams had to solve riddles, among them finding people on the street whose names matched those on a list, and had to race their way down to West Beach , where they had to complete physical challenges like squirt gun and Frisbee contests in order to win. The teams were made up of staffers from different departments, many of whom didn't know each other.

"In any company, employees will gravitate toward people in their department, people they work with in proximity," said Tom Adams, CEO of Bargain Networks. "That's why we do things like these, to bring about a community."