CAMP MURRAY, Wash. - Vehicle maintenance often happens in a shop, in the field or on the side of a road, but never in front of an audience and never for any recognition.
Staff Sgts. Ian Wilding, Delta Company, 141st Brigade Support Battalion, and Chris Yoder, Fox Company, 181st Brigade Support Battalion, Washington National Guard, stepped into the limelight after placing first and fourth, respectively, in the multistate Mechanic of the Year competition hosted by the Utah National Guard Aug. 24-25.
“We both walked in thinking that we could do well. Our shop foreman jokingly said if you don’t finish in the top 5, don’t bother coming home,” Yoder said. “With all the schools and certificates we get for being in the Guard, I knew we would do well.”
Twenty-six Guard members from 13 states participated in a 10-event competition that included physical and mental challenges.
“It involved everything around the shop in general,” Yoder said. “We did some welding, torch cutting, GCSS-Army practical exercise. There was an electrical section, and I am pretty good at electrical, but I was like, ‘whoa.’”
“Some of the events were a little over the top, so you have to adapt,” Wilding said.
Wilding and Yoder are full-time Title 32 dual-status technicians at the Combined Support Maintenance Shop at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.
Both are mechanics outside the Guard, finding things to tinker with or work on.
“We call Wilding ‘Wrench’ because he is always working on something, or his wife has him fixing something,” Yoder said. “And I am just a gearhead, and I love working on vehicles. Getting to do this as a career is amazing.”
While they both share a passion for the job, they concede they aren’t perfect at it.
“We get to go to so many schools and learn something new all the time, but when people ask me how I have gotten so good at this, I tell them through screwing up a lot,” Yoder said. “I basically tell them that you will learn from your mess ups and get better.”