Automotive student wins silver at world competition
Jack Frederick celebrates his silver medal win at WorldSkills Calgary 2009 in Canada on Sept. 6.
09/10/2009
An automotive technology student at Pittsburg State University has been recognized as one of the best in the world after bringing home the silver medal from the WorldSkills competition, held last week in Calgary, Canada.
Jack Frederick, a senior from Wichita, Kan., took second place in the Automobile Technology competition at WorldSkills Calgary 2009 on Sept. 6. He competed against contestants from 27 different countries within his division alone. A total of 51 countries had teams compete at the competition, which drew approximately 150,000 participants.
"I am ecstatic," said Frederick, who is traveling back to Pittsburg this week after competing in the four-day event, held Sept. 2-6 at the BMO Center in Calgary's Stampede Park. "This has been a dream of mine since I was a junior in high school, and I never gave up on it. This is a great example of the more work you put into something, the more you get out of it."
Frederick, 21, first got involved with SkillsUSA Kansas at his high school in Wichita with the encouragement of his former teacher and longtime mentor Robert Allen. He served as state high school president of the organization before coming to PSU in 2005. At Pitt State, he serves as president of the PSU SkillsUSA chapter, and was elected to serve as president of the college division of SkillsUSA (the national organization) in 2007-08.
Frederick learned last December that he had been chosen by the Automotive Service Technology Committee with SkillsUSA to compete in the world competition, which is held every two years in different locations throughout the world. He joined a group of 15 other contestants from across the nation to make up the USA team. In total, 42 different vocation areas were judged at the competition, including cabinet making, landscaping, welding and cooking. WorldSkills draws the best students from across the world to compete in various trade and technical areas.
After learning he had been selected to compete, Frederick got to work right away with his adviser, PSU Automotive Technology Professor Ron Downing. Downing, who is also involved in SkillsUSA, has served as the organization's national technical expert since 2001 and is regarded as one of the brightest automotive minds in the country. PSU Automotive Professors Scott Norman, Bob Shore and Mike Elder also helped with the training.
"We worked diligently to get our hands on the types of equipment we knew we'd be working with," Frederick said, adding that throughout the summer, they put in an average of 50 hours a week in training while gathering donations to make the trip possible. The preparations kept them so busy that Downing took a sabbatical this fall in order to continue his work with Frederick. Likewise, Frederick will finally get a chance to begin his fall class schedule later this week.
His win didn't come without a struggle, however. At the competition, Frederick spent three hours at each of the seven competition stations, solving problems in transmissions, engines, suspensions, and brakes and then being judged on his work. He experienced a language barrier with one of the judges, getting docked a few points when the judge thought he'd skipped a step at one station. He was also set back by having to work on a transmission that was damaged by a prior contestant.
Still, his win was record-setting. Downing, who has coached two other competitors to the silver medal in this competition at WorldSkills, said Frederick's score (550 out of 600), as well as the student from Ireland who took first place, were the highest in the competition's history. (Korea took the bronze.) Frederick also took home the gold medal for Best of Nation for accruing the highest score on his team.
"What separates Jack from a lot of people is that he has very strong diagnostic skills and he uses them to solve problems. He doesn't just guess," Downing said. "Throughout the competition he was totally focused and gave it everything he had to represent his school, state and country. I'm more proud of him for that than anything. He put everything he had into it."
With this amazing honor behind him, Frederick is back to finish his senior year before returning home to Wichita, where he has accepted a position with the Davis-Moore Automotive dealership.
For more information on WorldSkills, visit http://www.worldskills2009.com/.
---Pitt State---
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