World Skills has chosen the AutoRobot B20 electronic equipment to test Ranker's skills. Since the electronic version of this equipment is not even available in the U.S. at this time, the president of AutoRobot obtained approval from World Skills to allow use of the manual B20 version.

The seriousness of the competition becomes more evident with the information that the Japanese team will be training at the AutoRobot factory on the B20 and the Volvo S60 - the equipment and car being used for the competition - for two weeks prior to the Helsinki competition. AutoRobots' Scott Kinnear will be training Ranker in Prescott, Arizona. I-CAR's Tom McGee personally bought the plane ticket for Ranker to get him to Arizona for training.

SnapOn is donating all the tools that these competitors will need to use.

Both competitors will have technical experts as coaches traveling with them. Accompanying Ranker will be collision repair technical expert Ray Swedeen, who has retired from teaching collision repair for 27 years at the Dakota County Technical College in Rosemont, Minnesota, south of Minneapolis. Currently, Swedeen works for I-CAR - doing site inspections and training for I-CAR welding classes. This will be Swedeen's third WorldSkills competition.

The Refinishing technical expert coaching Smith will be Rodney Bolton, Auto Refinishing instructor and transportation department chairman of the Center of Applied Technology in Sevren, Maryland Five area high schools feed into the programs at the Center, where Bolton has been teaching for 15 years. Teresa Bolton, Mrs. Rodney Bolton, loves to watch her husband teach. "I just sit there in awe. He is an incredible instructor," she said with honest admiration. This will be Rodney Bolton's third World Skills competition.

About SkillsUSA

Bolton

SkillsUSA, formerly known as the Vocational Industrial Clubs of America (VICA), is a partnership of students, teachers and industry working to ensure America has a skilled workforce. The mission of SkillsUSA is to apply specific methods of instruction for preparing America's high performance workers in public career and technical programs. In addition, SkillsUSA provides quality education experiences in leadership, teamwork, citizenship and character development, while reinforcing self-confidence, work attitudes and communications skills. SkillsUSA has 13,000 school chapters in 54 U.S. state and territories. Approximately 264,000 students and instructors participate annually in the SkillsUSA program.

Teresa Bolton, as chairperson of Maryland SkillsUSA, is passionate about the program, the students and the end result. "I hear technician shortage, technician shortage wherever I go. Our future is these young men and women. I want kids that are driven and are perfectionists - those are the people I want to touch," she stated with quiet strength.

"SkillsUSA creates excitement and motivates the students to excel. It motivates them to start to like this industry," Bolton continued. "If the collision industry doesn't nurture our future, we won't have one."

Dreams come true

Collision repair has been a time-honored art of craftsmanship. The technological advancements in today's automobiles demand a higher level of skills and expertise than ever before. Teresa and Rodney Bolton are a living testimonial to the future of the collision repair industry and, in a broader sense, the future of our country. Without the unflagging inspiration from people like the Boltons, what type of future would future autobody technicians face?

The U.S.A.'s involvement in the WorldSkills Competition in 2005 would not have happened without Teresa Bolton. Sulkala summed it up: "I am so thrilled for her that this dream and belief of hers has now become real. From conception to implementation, she handled every facet of this program. Her dogged determination has made it look easy, to the point where others may now take it from here to be repeated over and over again in the future. I am very proud of her visions and her accomplishment. She is an inspiration to us all of what can be done by working together and believing in your dreams."

Janet Chaney has served in many facets of the collision repair industry. She is now looking after the best interests of her clients from Desert Hills, Arizona. E-mail her at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it