Columbia (WLTX) -- This high school senior is the first in South Carolina to win the state SkillsUSA Auto Collision Repair Championship.
"Honestly, I'm a really big girly girl at heart. I'm good at this stuff, but I like pretty dresses and I like getting my nails done," Jennifer Lynn Nix said.
She has heard her calling; the roar under the hood of a car.
"This isn't just a guys' field, anybody can do it."
She has proven that to be true, as the first female ever to take state in the SkillsUSA Auto Collision Repair Championship.
"It's seven hours wrapped up of everything you should know how to to do, everything that we have learned here was at competition."
She sped past 27 male competitors.
"I know how to paint, I know how to weld, I know how to use a frame simulator," she said.
"She's got to be able to do dent repair, she's got to be able to do frame dent analysis and estimating," said her auto collision repair instructor, James Philip Tanner.
Tanner says Nix has work ethic.
"A lot of studying, a lot of hard work. You've got to be very competitive with the guys in here," he said.
Nix will compete at the national competition in June.
"From the day she came in here she really wanted to be in here, it wasn't just to be in here to see 'cause I like cars," he said.
Beyond the finish line of competition, Nix is going to auto diesel college in Tennessee.
"I probably want to open a shop one day or be an auto collision teacher myself," she said.
If Nix wins the national competition too, she will be the first female to take that title.
4/28/2009 2:11:11 PM
