Auto Hawks soar to final

Two Grafton High School seniors have won a state technology-based car competition and qualified for a national contest in New York City this spring.

Matt Kline and Cody Williams excelled in the Automobile Dealers Association of Mega Milwaukee Technicians of Tomorrow Competition during the Greater Milwaukee Car & Truck Show on Thursday, Feb. 28.

Billed as the Auto Hawks, the students tested their mechanical skills on a 2019 Subaru Forester while competing against four other area finalist teams from Mukwonago, Arrowhead, Muskego and West Bend.

Kline and Williams are students in teacher Carl Hader’s two-hour Advanced Auto Tech class. Williams is an open-enrollment student from Mequon who attends Grafton strictly for the auto tech program, Hader said.

By winning the ADAMM competition, the students each received a scholarship to a technical school in Wisconsin and a tool set valued at about $6,000. 

The victory also earned the duo and their coach a trip to the Big Apple to compete in the National Auto Tech Competition during the New York International Auto Show from April 22 to 24. This marks the seventh consecutive year a Grafton team has qualified for the national event.

This is also the 18th team Hader has coached to the national finals since 1994.

“Many of those students now work in the automotive industry as truck and car technicians, automotive educators and as design engineers,” he said.  

Grafton has finished in the top 10 at the national level 12 times, with three  teams taking first place. Hader is the only educator outside of New York to win the competition three times, and Grafton has the most top-10 showings in the country. 

Hader said the national competition is a much more challenging hands-on test than state because teams will have three hours to repair a car that usually can’t be completely fixed. 

The event will also feature 10 work stations ranging from engine repair and testing to controller area network diagnostics. Students will also participate in a face-to-face job interview hosted by Mercedes and BMW.

Hader said Kline and Williams practiced more than 20 hours outside of class at Sommer’s Subaru in Mequon in preparation for the state contest. 

When they’re not busy with school and other activities, Kline works at 5 Corners Dodge in Cedarburg and Williams at Freistadt Auto in Mequon.

Hader said there is a lot of work ahead of the team as it prepares for the national event. The duo will gear up for the event by practicing on a 2019 Chevy Malibu at Newman Chevrolet in Cedarburg.

“We will have to log some heavy-duty practice hours in the weeks leading up to New York City to even have a chance at a top-10 finish,” Hader said.

“The guys are amped for the event because this is not an opportunity that comes around more than once in a lifetime for a high school student.”