Vernon students place sixth at automotive competition

Vernon — Vernon Township High School seniors Alex Badillo and Andrew Carosella placed sixth out of a field of nearly fifty competitors primarily driven by their passion for automotives. The only five contestants who surpassed them take automotive training in a technical school where they focus on their skills for three hours of every school day. VTHS has no automotive program, so Badillo and Carosella are largely self-taught.
They participated in an event at Universal Technology Institute in Bloomfield this month called the Top Tech challenge. There 48 teams of two students each competed against each other, starting with a 50-question multiple choice test first in which only the top 20 scores advanced.
Following that, there were five hands-on stations in which the students were competing tasks that were, in the words of the instructors “advanced level material.”
After that, the top six teams were selected, earning scholarships to UTI ranging from full scholarship for first place down to twenty-five percent for places fourth through sixth. Mike DeVore, their CFM (construction management) class at VTHS was proud of them both. “They’re self-taught and clearly exemplify a passion and drive for this field and it showed. They were rewarded for their efforts from a scholarship standpoint,” he said, “but where I am most impressed is the competition they were going against and still managed to succeed despite the lack of daily training in the field. Truly a wonderful accomplishment!”