On October 25, 2017, a crew of 15-20 students traveled to Indianapolis, Ind. to compete in the Delo Tractor Restoration Competition. They dedicated countless hours and lots of Tuesday and Thursday nights to this project.

“We spent 1,547 hours and 49 minutes split between 15 people on this tractor,” senior Alexis Musket said.

The team consisted of boys and girls that all attend Four Rivers Career Center and are a part of the night shift. The crew meets every Tuesday and Thursday night, all under the instruction of Automotive Technology Instructor Dan Brinkmann. However, this wasn’t their first time restoring a tractor.

“In recent years we’ve been rebuilding tractors for a while, but this tractor was donated by the Knights of Columbus for us to rebuild and the purpose was for charity, so they could raffle it off,” senior Trevor Seals said.

Although they’ve been rebuilding tractors for a while, this was the first time they participated in a national competition.

“We restored this tractor, and two years ago we realized there was a national competition called the Delo Tractor Restoration and this year we realized we were eligible [to compete],” Musket said.

The Delo competition is a national competition for high school students so they can showcase their hard work and love for tractors.

“They broke up the competition into two days and separated the 12 finalists into day one and day two. They had five judges and two representatives from Chevron that we stood in front of and talked to,” Musket said. “Then we gave them a 20-minute presentation about our tractor and the steps we took to [restore it], and we had 15 minutes of questions that were technical questions and whatnot.”

Although the competition is rigorous, it is also a huge honor to be one of the 12 finalists.

“We had a dinner/award ceremony where they revealed 1-3 place, but we are just considered Top 12 because we didn’t place in the Top Three,” Musket said.

After the competition, the tractor was raffled off for charity.

“This tractor ended up being raffled off for the Knights of Columbus and it raised $16,500 in raffle tickets alone,” Musket said.

Lots of money was raised, and it was all for a good cause.

“On Sept. 10, 2017, we raised $40,000 and eight pickup truck loads of food for people who couldn’t provide for themselves,” Musket said.

Even though they didn’t take home first in the competition, the students still learned lots of lessons that will stick with them forever.

“It was a life-touching experience for me, it taught me leadership qualities and it brought me out of my shell in night shift and now I’m fine with public speaking,” Musket said. “It made me realize I can touch so many people’s lives even doing something small.”