By: Ty Lounsbury
The students in the Automotive program are on a rolllately! This week’s winners are Lukas McConnell and Austin Earl who just won the Northampton Community College Auto Skills Competition on March 6, 2024. They won many tools and a new 2015 GMC Sierra truck for the Automotive CTE.Although this is a different competition, the level of work and dedication that these young men put into this is no less than the previously mentioned students, Jack Duggan and Scott Tavoline.
Lukas and Austin have put in several hours of work both before and after school. They would show up at school as early as six in the morning and come back to the school at night to continue their training with Doc Watson. McConnell and Earl, like Duggan and Tavoline, attribute their success to Doc’s help.All the time he spent practicing with them and helping them improve their skills was necessary to their amazing win at the Northampton Community College Auto Skills Competition.
This rigorous competition consisted of diagnosing a truck’s mechanical issues for an activity they call “no crank, no start”, an electrical station all about voltage, a brake station where the two had to measure things like rotors, an activity where they had to find all the reasons why certain cars wouldn’t pass Pennsylvania State Inspection, diagnosing the reason an engine is misfiring, and something relating to the timing chain on amotor. There were twenty minutes for each part, and although they almost always finished with time to spare, there were a couple close calls. Despite the time limit and having never worked together, they managed to place first and will now be moving onto the state competition in Hershey, Pennsylvania.Congratulations to both Lukas McConnell and Austin Earl for their spectacular win, and good luck in Hershey!
