Maui High students take fourth at nationals

David Casayuran and Joseph Burger of Maui High School took fourth place in the national Ford/AAA Student Auto Skills Competition in Dearborn, Mich., on Tuesday.

Two-member student teams from high schools in all 50 states competed in a race at Ford headquarters to fix identical cars that had been deliberately and identically bugged.

The first-place finishers, Morgan White and Jay Saunders of Vale High School in Vale, Ore., earned a "perfect car" score by repairing all the deficiencies with no demerits. Their hands-on score combined with a written test taken Monday to win them the national trophy and additional prizes.

All entered students were competing for more than $12 million in scholarship prizes.

For the past decade, teams from Maui High have placed among the top 10 in the competition, winning national titles in 1995 and 2000.

Casayuran and Burger were accompanied to the mainland by their Maui High auto tech instructor, Shannon Rowe, who, while he was a student, took second place in the national competition in 1996.