Student automotive technicians compete in Okmulgee

Scholarship money and maybe national recognition are the rewards for ten teams of student mechanics looking for car problems Thursday at OSU-Okmulgee. <br/><br/>As The News on 6 reporter Rick Wells explains,

Thursday, May 6th 2004, 10:29 am

By: News On 6

Scholarship money and maybe national recognition are the rewards for ten teams of student mechanics looking for car problems Thursday at OSU-Okmulgee.

As The News on 6 reporter Rick Wells explains, first prize goes to the team who can find 'em and fix 'em.

Beep, beep. â€œYou do that Matt?â€ â€œNope." These are Oklahoma's best young student mechanics. They are from vo-tech programs statewide and this is the Ford/AAA Quality Care Challenge. A competition to find the best of the best.

Al DiFalco, Ford Tech Support Operations Manager: "Our goal is, we need experienced entry level technicians." He says Ford gets 500-600 students a year who enter the Ford system from this contest nationwide. But that's a drop in the bucket, there's a nationwide shortage of 30,000 qualified technicians, I mean, mechanics. But back to the contest.

There are 10 Ford Crown Victorias identically equipped; each one has been bugged with the same nine problems. The contest is find 'em and fix 'em faster than anyone else. The only clues, each team gets an identical repair order. After that they're on their own.

More than 300 students were nominated by their schools, and then they took a qualifying test. The contestants in Okmulgee on Thursday were the top qualifiers.

About a half hour into the competition there goes the first car out of line for a test drive. Meanwhile everybody else is still at it. After the test drive, Matt McCollom and Matthew Winfrey turn their car over to the judges. "We've been practicing for three weeks; we've had everything thrown at us. Honestly we think we missed something it was so quick." The judges checked the car and the repairs. They didn't miss anything, they nailed it.

So the best in Oklahoma head to Detroit for a similar contest against the best in the nation. Matt McCollum and Matthew Winfrey are from the Eastern Oklahoma County Tech Center in Choctaw. The national competition is the last weekend in June.