West Delaware Represents Iowa at National Auto Skills Competition

Earlier this week, two West Delaware High School students were featured in a KWWL story.  The news story told of how Alex Funke and Kyle Heims went to the National Auto Tech Competition in Michigan where they placed 26th overall.

The West Delaware pair won the right to represent Iowa at nationals after winning the 2012 Iowa Ford/AAA Student Auto Skills Competition on Tuesday, May 8, 2012, at Des Moines Area Community College in Ankeny.   At the state level they beat teams from all over the state.  Some of these entrants were from Community Colleges around Iowa so I’m sure quite a few of them were older and possibly had more hands-on experience than Alex and Kyle.  To add to their accomplishment, they were the only team at the state level, who completely fixed their car.  They solved all of the problems accurately with no mistakes and had the only “perfect car” at the end of the day.

The late Paul Runde who passed away earlier used to say, “Runde’s has complete confidence in your ability to see the problem through to its logical conclusion.” And I think this applies fittingly to these two young men.  They were presented with problems and they resolved the problems in a logical and deductive manner.

They mention in the video that they are grateful to Runde Auto Group for loaning them a new Ford Fiesta to practice on.  And we’d just like to say that we are very proud to invest in successful program like the one Jason Guyer runs at the High School in Manchester.   According to the KWWL story, West Delaware H.S. has won at the state level and gone on to represent Iowa at the Nationals 5 out of the last 8 years.

Congrats to Jason, Alex and Kyle for this significant accomplishment.  Keep up the great work guys!