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The sound of one man winning
MHCC freshman delivers high performance without a lot of noise
Greg Stoltz
The Advocate
There’s a lot that 19-year-old Lance Erickson doesn’t say.
It’s not that he’s uncommunicative. Erickson, a first-year student in the MHCC Ford ASSET program, seems happy enough to answer questions about himself.
Even so, his dad, Dean Erickson, said of his son, “He doesn’t talk a lot. You don’t always know what all is going on.”
If you find out he’s half of the championship team that won the 2008 Ford/AAA Student Auto Skills competition for the state of Oregon – and then went on to place eighth in the nation – you probably didn’t hear it from him.
When asked, Erickson does say winning earned him a scholarship to the MHCC Ford ASSET Program. ASSET, which stands for Automotive Student Service Educational Training, is “in-depth, bumper-to-bumper technical training using state of the art tools and equipment,” said Jerry Lyons, MHCC Ford ASSET instructor and the man responsible for bringing the auto skills contest to MHCC in 2008.
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Students in the program, offered by MHCC in conjunction with the Ford Motor Company, spend every other term working at a sponsoring Ford dealership.
Erickson was supposed to start his internship last fall quarter, his second at MHCC, but it fell through and he spent the time at home, working with his dad building countertops.
Asked about the setback, he said only, “The economy went bad so I couldn’t get on at Gentry [Ford, in Ontario, Ore.]. Erickson said he hopes to get on at the Ford dealership in Burns, Ore., starting spring quarter.
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On other subjects, Erickson provides more detail. He talks about the football program at the high school in his small Eastern Oregon hometown of Vale, noting they’ve won 10 state championships, more than any other school in Oregon.
He omits, however, that he was part of that football program: playing varsity all four years, making it to the state championship game twice and coming in second both times.
Then there are the big things he understandably chooses not to mention.
When he was in fourth grade, he almost lost his father to complications from routine surgery. In seventh grade, a motorcycle accident punctured Erickson’s lung and required a titanium rod in his leg. When he was born, it was with a severely constricted aorta that nearly ended his life nine months later.
In each case, the outcome could have been much worse. Dean Erickson recovered from the blood clot in his spine that left him temporarily paralyzed.
Erickson missed a season of basketball while he healed from his crash, serving instead as manager for the boys’ and girls’ teams at his middle school. Once Erickson’s arterial condition was diagnosed, his surgeon removed the constricted portion and spliced the aorta back together with no complications.
After that surgery, Erickson was healthy, strong and active. “He just never slowed down. I don’t think he even knew his own strength,” said his mom, Tina Erickson. “Lance needs to be kept busy.”
Erickson did keep busy. He helped ranch and farm with his grandfather and uncle. He and his father would fish, hunt and cut firewood together. “He’s cut a lot of firewood,” said his dad.
Erickson said one of his favorite pastimes growing up was riding dirt bikes. “If it had wheels, I was on it, whatever it was,” he said. Erickson also rode his grandfather’s horses but said, “I’m not really one for horses. I like horsepower, not horses. I get bucked off too many times.”
With a lifelong love of using his hands and solving problems, Erickson was at his dad’s side from an early age. “Lance has always been out in the garage with his father working on cars,” said Tina Erickson. “Lance was always his father’s helper, always.”
Erickson confirms that. “Since I was old enough to walk and strong enough, I was always there with him,” he said.
In high school, he continued to nurture his love of fixing cars. Erickson took all four years of Merle Saunders’ automotive technology program at Vale High, hoping to become part of the school’s auto troubleshooting dynasty.
This is something Erickson is eager to discuss.
Saunders first entered a team in what has become the Ford/AAA Student Auto Skills competition in 1984. Since that time, his teams from Vale High School have won the state contest 21 times – every year but four – with Erickson and his partner, Caitlin Short, bringing home number 21.
Erickson grew up very aware of the success of Saunders’ program. “Our high school has a repeated history of winning the contest,” he said. “I wanted to grow up and be like the kids I saw win – and uphold the tradition.”
He is also free with praise for Saunders, of whom he says, “Merle’s the best teacher I’ve ever had. His love for his subject comes through so much. If that doesn’t impact you in some way, then you probably shouldn’t be there.”
His trip to the state contest started with the qualifying exam in February of his senior year. Erickson was home the day of the test, too sick with pneumonia to get out of bed – pneumonia that just a few days later would force him to withdraw from the district wrestling meet, keeping him from earning what he’d hoped would be his second visit to the state tournament.
Saunders phoned the Erickson home and spoke to Tina Erickson. He said Erickson had to take the exam that day or he’d miss his chance. Tina recalled, “I gave (Lance) Dayquil and whatever I could give him. (Afterward) he was so out of it, he just knew he didn’t make the team. Lance said he did not remember one question on the test.”
The results, however, he remembers. Erickson got the second highest score in the school and in the state, trailing only his partner. They were going to the state competition.
With Saunders’ guidance, they studied three to four hours every day after school until the competition in May. They were there on Saturdays, too. “Some Saturdays a lot more than three hours,” Saunders said. They went on to win the state contest and advanced to the national competition and that eighth-place finish.
Saunders said, “There were some factors outside Lance’s control that kept them from placing higher (at nationals).” Erickson did say that his partner made a mistake, but that it could have happened to anyone.
Like so much else, Erickson doesn’t seem to be dwelling on it. Maybe he knows that winning in life doesn’t require coming in first.
Maybe the surest sign of a champion is what he doesn’t say.