Thanks to our friends at IRWIN, we celebrated our SkillsUSA 100% advisors at the IRWIN Bristol Night Race in Bristol, Tenn. during the August 21 weekend. An all-expense-paid trip for Rachel Montgomery, a local SkillsUSA advisor from Idaho, was the first SkillsUSA “Mega Prize” awarded from a drawing held at NLSC in June. It was a spectacular way to recognize one of our best advisors and her husband (who just happened to be huge NASCAR fans – and Rachel’s favorite driver won all three races at Bristol that weekend). Thanks to IRWIN and YDF member Cheryl Mehrmann and board member Nick Morrisroe for their generous contribution of this Mega Prize. We’ll be exploring more ways to recognize our teachers and state directors with incentives like this one.

Peyton Sellers ran his Sellers Racing Chevrolet fully-wrapped with the SkillsUSA logo on the hood, rear deck and sides, on May 29 during the qualifying trials in the Tech-Net Auto Service 300 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. He even wore a SkillsUSA logo fire suit. Here’s more information www.skillsusa.org/supporters/peytonsellers.shtml.

SkillsUSA has recently had great exposure on the NASCAR circuit. The Peyton Sellers car ran in the Nationwide Series on April 4 with the SkillsUSA logo prominently displayed on the rear quarters. On Sunday, April 5, I had the opportunity to witness the SkillsUSA logo run on the #48 Kobalt Tough Tools for Cool Schools car and Jimmie Johnson drove to a 2nd place finish. The highlight of my trip was an interview on the SPEED CHANNEL with alumna Wendy Venturini. Wendy is from North Carolina and was SkillsUSA’s national gold medalist in 1996 in the prepared speech competition in Kansas City. You can view the interview and see how great our logo looked on the car here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWcmbcxwPas.

Peyton Sellers showed his continued commitment to SkillsUSA as the keynote speaker at the SkillsUSA Georgia opening ceremony in Atlanta on April 16. Wendy Venturini has accepted our invitation to be a part of the NLSC opening ceremony on June 23.

On Thursday, March 4, Kelly Horton and I traveled to Atlanta to join the Lowe’s Kobalt Tools Team and four-time NASCAR Champion Jimmie Johnson in an exciting event to honor our first school in the 2010 “Toolbox for Education” Kobalt Tool program. SkillsUSA students and their advisor from Jonesboro High School in Atlanta were taken on a “tool shopping spree” in the Lowe’s store by driver Jimmie Johnson, and they left the store with $1,100.00 worth of Kobalt Mechanic’s tools. Jimmie Johnson told me: “SkillsUSA is really a perfect fit for me to talk about. Your organization is doing fantastic things.”

The tool set was the first of 400 to be presented to SkillsUSA Automotive Service Technology chapters nationwide. The chapters receiving the tools are all 100% chapters that engage all students in the program as active members. All chapters have been notified of their awards, and each chapter will visit their local Lowe’s store to redeem the coupon for tools and a Lowe’s/Kobalt/SkillsUSA co-branded banner for their labs. The total value of the nationwide tool donation is $440,000.

The event, held at Lowe’s of Edgewood in Atlanta, included an overview of the tool program by Lowe’s executive Billy Sarvis, and I delivered a presentation on the SkillsUSA/Lowe’s partnership, expressed appreciation on behalf of our students nationwide and congratulated the local chapter.

Jimmie Johnson drove the Lowe’s #48 car into the doorway of the Lowe’s store and received an enthusiastic welcome from the store associates, SkillsUSA members and the general public who attended. There was lots of press on hand, and our students were featured in a spot by the Fox Network that aired Sunday at the beginning of the Kobalt Tools 500 at the Atlanta Motor Speedway.

SkillsUSA Georgia State Association Director Gayle Silvey joined us in Atlanta, and she did a great job in helping to organize the event.

A video of the event is available below: