{"id":276978,"date":"2024-09-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=276978"},"modified":"2024-09-13T02:33:19","modified_gmt":"2024-09-13T02:33:19","slug":"washington-guardsmen-shine-at-mechanic-of-year-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=276978","title":{"rendered":"Washington Guardsmen Shine at Mechanic of Year Competition"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Staff Sgts. Ian Wilding, Delta Company 141st Brigade Support Battalion, and Chris Yoder, Fox Company 181st Brigade Support Battalion, show off their awards following the 2024 National Guard Best Mechanic of the Year competition at Camp Williams, Utah, Aug. 25, 2024. Wilding took top honors; Yoder finished fourth out of 26 competitors. (Courtesy Photo)
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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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe both walked in thinking that we could do well. Our shop foreman jokingly said if you don\u2019t finish in the top 5, don\u2019t bother coming home,\u201d Yoder said. \u201cWith all the schools and certificates we get for being in the Guard, I knew we would do well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twenty-six Guard members from 13 states participated in a 10-event competition that included physical and mental challenges.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt involved everything around the shop in general,\u201d Yoder said. \u201cWe 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, \u2018whoa.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the events were a little over the top, so you have to adapt,\u201d Wilding said.<\/p>\n

Wilding and Yoder are full-time Title 32 dual-status technicians at the Combined Support Maintenance Shop at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.<\/p>\n

Both are mechanics outside the Guard, finding things to tinker with or work on.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe call Wilding \u2018Wrench\u2019 because he is always working on something, or his wife has him fixing something,\u201d Yoder said. \u201cAnd I am just a gearhead, and I love working on vehicles. Getting to do this as a career is amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

While they both share a passion for the job, they concede they aren\u2019t perfect at it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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,\u201d Yoder said. \u201cI basically tell them that you will learn from your mess ups and get better.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Staff Sgts. Ian Wilding, Delta Company 141st Brigade Support Battalion, and Chris Yoder, Fox Company 181st Brigade Support Battalion, show off their awards following the 2024 National Guard Best Mechanic of the Year competition at Camp Williams, Utah, Aug. 25, 2024. Wilding took top honors; Yoder finished fourth out of 26 competitors. (Courtesy Photo) (Photo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276980,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-276978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=276978"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":276981,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276978\/revisions\/276981"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/276980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=276978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=276978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=276978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}