#JungleExpress living out IU tradition as riders

Walking in the front door of his home, it’s evident. Junior Brad Murrell lives in a jungle.
A 6-foot long stuffed animal boa constrictor guards the top of the couch. Two spotlights with green bulbs cast an earthy look to the room while a laser-printed sign greets those who enter, “Welcome to the Jungle.”

During Welcome Week last fall, a party at Murrell’s house got out of hand. From then on, his roommates and friends deemed the house “The Jungle.”

By September, he and his three senior roommates decided they wanted to participate in a third IU tradition — besides drinking and basketball.

They wanted to ride in the Little 500. They named their team #JungleExpress.
Senior Dusty Moloy’s last time around Little 500 was when he watched the race freshman year, which he said was so long ago he barely remembers it.

When spring semester rolled around, the four roommates went through Rookie Week together.

“It was ugly,” Murrell said.

“We looked hideous,” Moloy added.

On Saturday, with yellow war paint smeared beneath their eyes, #JungleExpress qualified 22nd with a time of 02:35:41, beating nine fraternity teams and eight more that didn’t even qualify.

“I’m excited just to race in it,” Moloy said. “I feel like we’re physically fit. We just had to put the right pieces together.”

Those pieces started with a fan base. The team decided to add a hashtag in front of its name for one reason — Twitter.

“We use it to talk to our fans about everything — buying tickets, telling them what color jersey we have,” Murrell said. “We are incredibly social media-friendly.”

The next piece is to learn more about the race.

“The race director emailed all the teams about turning in designs for a pit board. I didn’t know what that was, so I Googled it,” Murrell said. “We didn’t know much about Miss-N-Outs, ITTs or Team Pursuit so we YouTubed them to see how they all work.”

No matter what social media tool #JungleExpress has to use to sharpen the team members’ skills for race day, they said they aren’t surprised that they shocked the Little 500 world by making it into the race.

“Yeah, we’re an amateur team, but we’re just happy to be in the race,” Murrell said. “We have a “Why not us?” kind of mentality. We want to be the team people can root for when they don’t have a house or friends on a team.”

In 15 days, #JungleExpress will don a yellow, green and red kit in the 61st running of the men’s Little 500. And for the three seniors, it’s the best way to end their time at Indiana.

“It’s really just the icing on the cake,” Moloy said.