RAMONARAMONA — Two Ramona High School students are gearing up for a trip to New York City this month where they’ll test their auto repair skills against mechanically gifted students from 30 other high schools across the country.
Benjamin Lackey, 18, and Alexia Hall, 17, were chosen for the honor about a month ago, after Ramona High automotive teacher Robert Grace invited half-a-dozen students to his classroom to eat pizza and soda — and take an aptitude test on auto mechanics.
Lackey and Hall, both seniors, aced out the competition, earning a trip to the Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association’s annual National Automotive Technology Challenge, the most prestigious auto mechanic competition for high school students in the United States.
The March 29-30 competition will be held at New York City’s cavernous Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. The winning student will receive thousands of dollars in scholarships to a technical school, $10,000 worth of Snap-on tools and a toolbox. The winning school will receive a welder and a Toyota vehicle to work on.
Hall said she’s “a little nervous” about the event, but she has consistently done well since enrolling in Ramona’s automotive program during her junior year with the encouragement of her parents.
“My family thinks a girl shouldn’t be stuck on the side of the road. It’s a good skill set,” said Hall, who plans to enlist in the U.S. Army after graduation this spring and specialize in the medical field.
When she was younger, her dad would take her along for rides in his vacuum truck that he uses in his business, B Hall Sweeping Inc., to suck up dirt and litter in parking lots of big retailers.
“I ire my father — I want my kids to look at me the same way that I look at him,” Hall said.
Lackey, who works part-time at Mossy Toyota dealership as a lube technician, wants to earn an associate degree in MiraCosta College’s automotive technology program. He hopes the degree will eventually land him a job as a mechanic.
With his mom, he regularly crawls under the family’s convertible Saab 9-3 — a compact executive car — to replace crank shaft seals or oil gaskets.
“My dad isn’t very savvy with cars,” Lackey said. “He’s into PCs.”
Over the past several weeks, the two students have been putting in extra time practicing on everything from diagnosing electrical shorts and wheel balancing to engine compression and mechanical and tool vocabulary.
It’s all part of the competition where they’ll be tested on everything from under-the-hood diagnostics to the proper tools that are used to fix something.
Grace, the automotive teacher, has been down this road before. In 2003, Ramona took the grand prize in the annual competition, said Carole Rogner, a spokeswoman with Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association.
“This is exciting to take our kids to this challenge and represent our community,” Grace said. “We are well thought of in the country for our auto shop already.”
The competition was founded in 1993. “It is a pretty big deal,” said Rogner.
Ramona High — which has seen its automotive program dwindle to 120 students, from more than double that in 2004 — is the only local school participating this year.
Lackey and Hall are sponsored by the New Car Dealers Association of San Diego and will compete against 30 other schools from Texas and Colorado to Massachusetts and New York.
Other Southern California schools entered in the competition include Van Nuys High School in the San Fernando Valley; Loara High School in Anaheim; and Artesia High School in Lakewood, just north of Long Beach.
