In their first year of participating in the national Quaker State Best in Class Challenge competition, Etowah High School places third in the Atlanta region.

Marc Guiliano, the automotive instructor at Etowah, was first informed about the competition from Mr. Ball.

“Mr. Ball got an email from Quaker State and then he forwarded it to me and I contacted them to find out what was going on,” Guiliano said.

Placing in the competition was the main objective, but preparing was no easy task. In order to be eligible to even place, a video was required. Specifically within the video there was a bio on Guiliano as well as information and pictures of Etowah High School and the automotive shop where the students do their work on the cars. The required time was 30 seconds.

Quaker State ended up using Etowah and another school’s video as promo because not all the schools knew what to do for their video.

When picking the winner, Quaker State focused on how the automotive class functioned and all the materials involved for understanding the basics of how a car works. The competition mainly focuses on how old cars functioned which goes along with how Guiliano teaches his automotive students.

That was the only part of the competition that was somewhat easy to prepare for, due to lack of information provided by Quaker State. One of the problems was because when Etowah first contacted Quaker State for information, they were still in the process of organizing and finalizing all the information.

Overall, Etowah finished behind first place Maxwell High School of Technology and second Alexander High School. Even though Etowah did not place where they wanted, Guiliano is determined to make first place next year.