Kansas City, Here We Come

For the second consecutive year, Metropolitan Community College students enrolled in the Mopar Career Automotive Program (CAP) are among the top schools in the country after advancing to the Final Four in the 2025 Mopar CAP Bracket Challenge.

The MCC Mopar CAP program is part of a nationwide effort by Mopar to train and employ entry-level automotive technicians for Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge and Ram dealerships. The Mopar CAP Bracket Challenge brings together Mopar CAP partner schools throughout the country to participate in friendly technical and curriculum-based competition. Nearly 100 schools were eligible to compete in the Bracket Challenge.

While Mopar CAP has been a training program for decades across the country, MCC started the program in 2023.

“Advancing to the Final Four two years in a row is kind of a like a report card for how we’re setting up our classes and teaching the fundamentals. This tells me we are one of the top schools in the country,” said MCC Mopar Cap instructor Chad Woodworth. “As instructors, we can’t know what changes are going to happen to cars over the next five or 10 years, so we really focus on teaching the fundamentals. We challenge our students by bugging vehicles and having our students work hands-on through the issues like it’s a team sport.”

Nick Smith and Connor Jensen represented MCC in the third round of the national competition, helping the team advance through the résumé and mock interview portion of the event. The team’s win ousted last year’s national champion, State University of New York (Morrisville, N.Y.), from the tournament field, providing the MCC team with boost of confidence heading into the next round that they stack up well with any opponent.

The four remaining schools will travel to their nearest Stellantis Technical Training Center, where they will participate in timed and judged technical challenges on Nov. 13. Daniel Grabowski and Nathan Kraemer will compete on behalf of the 20-member MCC Mopar CAP, which maintains a 100% employment rate as they participate in the program.

MCC will be competing against Kirtland Community College (Grayling, Mich.) in the Final Four. The winner will qualify for the national championship held on Dec. 2 in Auburn Hills, Mich., where Mopar is headquartered.

Grabowski, 19, said the Bracket Challenge has been an exciting experience during his education at MCC. He expects to complete the program in spring 2026 and is currently employed at H&H CDJR.

Grabowski said a dual enrollment small engine class at Blair High School piqued his interest in exploring automotive careers, and after a visit to the MCC Automotive Training Center on the South Omaha Campus, he was ready to commit to the program.

“At Career Day, I learned about some of the specialized automotive programs and was really excited about getting to work with Chrysler products,” Grabowski said. “As one of the newest members of the Mopar CAP cohort, I was honored that Chad asked me to compete. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime kind of opportunity.”

Grabowski benefits from four decades of Mopar CAP experience among his instructors, Woodworth and Brad Dieckmann. Woodworth spent more than 30 years as a Mopar technician, and Dieckmann spent nearly 10 years as corporate trainer for the company.

Woodworth said no matter the final results of the Bracket Challenge, he is proud of how the entire Mopar CAP team has represented MCC at the competition.

“Our students are driven to do this work — they have the dedication. They are students you like to have in class and stretch you as an instructor. The relationship managers and mentors we are working with during the competition are happy with how our students are representing our program,” Woodworth said.

One of the products Grabowski and his instructors are hoping to get more familiar with is the 2018, 800-plus horsepower Dodge Challenger Demon. The school that wins the Bracket Challenge will be able to put the street-legal drag car on display. Woodworth already has a spot picked out for it at the Automotive Training Center on the South Omaha Campus.

“We’d really like to see that Demon on our showroom floor,” Woodworth said.

Visit mccneb.edu/Mopar-CAP for more information about the MCC Mopar CAP program.