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Letter to the Editor

TeamUSA Heads to World Skills Competition in Finland

For several decades, SkillsUSA, formerly known as VICA, has been sending some of America’s finest to compete against the best in the world in an international skill contest, the Olympics of occupational skill training. TeamUSA, with the financial help of the collision repair industry, will once again have two competitors representing our industry at the World Skills Competition.

In May of 2005, two of America’s finest will travel to Helsinki, Finland to compete against the best in the world, and I, for one, am thrilled that our industry will be represented. In 2003, I was honored by SkillsUSA to serve as the volunteer leader of TeamUSA. I was disappointed, however, that the collision repair industry was not sending competitors that year. We did have a fine competitor on the automotive service side and he got the silver medal in his competition, but we didn’t have a body tech or painter there to represent us.

Due to the absence of competitors from our field in the 2003 event, upon my return I issued a written challenge to this industry, through the trade press, to never go to the World Skills Competition again without a representative from our industry. Thankfully, the National Auto Body Council (NABC) and the Collision Industry Foundation stepped up to the plate and took on this challenge.

ASE’s Teresa Bolton volunteered to head up the effort, and what a great job she has done. I want to thank each and every one of the companies who contributed, for helping make it possible for the USA to send two competitors to the World Skills Competition this year.

The two competitors in the Collision Repair contests are:

Bodie Smith of Spanish Fork, Utah

Bodie will be competing in the automotive refinishing contest (known as Car Painting in the World Skills Competition). Bodie attended Utah Valley State College.

Nicolaus Ranker from Lakewood, Colorado

Nicolaus will be competing in Auto Body Repair. Nicolaus attended Warren Occupational Tech Center.

Both Bodie and Nicolaus competed in the SkillsUSA Championships at the national level and earned the privilege of representing us on TeamUSA.

SkillsUSA has asked me if I would, once again, be the TeamUSA Leader and I have agreed to serve in that role. I’m volunteering more than two weeks of my time to take these wonderful young people to the pinnacle event of their lives, and this time, happily, we will have representatives from our industry thanks to the generous support of many in this industry.

The $50,000 required to be represented in this event covers the USA dues to belong to the World Skills Organization, the coordination of sending TeamUSA to the international event, the travel costs associated with sending the competitors, technical experts and delegates to the event and more. Selecting the competitors and providing them with additional training isn’t included in this total, either. No one is lining their pockets with this support, it all goes to the important cause of sending America’s finest to compete with the best from around the world.

As an industry, we can now leverage our support of TeamUSA by holding our competitors up for the nation to see. We can tell parents and teachers and principals and guidance counselors and others what our industry is all about, what it takes to be as good as the TeamUSA competitors are what it takes to be an instructor that trains a student to this high level of achievement and more. What great, positive role models these competitors can be for us! We need lots more like them in this industry.

To follow along with how TeamUSA is doing in Finland, go to the SkillsUSA web site.

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