NASHVILLE – The competition in the first round of the 2021 IDEAL Electrician National Championship wasn’t over yet, but Greg Anliker was finished with the task and already posing for selfies with fans.
At the Music City Center, in a cavernous exhibition hall transformed into the stage for celebrating the electrical trade, most everyone knows Anliker. And they’re chasing him. That’s what happens when you have won three of the four previous in-person versions of the Pro competition. He’s a marked man, but not in a villainous sense.
» Want to grow your electrical business? Click here to get a demo
Instead, he’s at the top of his profession, where seemingly everyone in Nashville, from Music Row to the beer joints on Broadway to the Music City Center, wants to be: on the brightest stage, at the top of the industry, performing at their peak. And he’s very supportive of the trades, the competition and the other competitors — even as their rival.
Did Anliker, an electrician from Chicago, ever expect to be posing for selfies with fans?
“Not a chance,” he said. “This is sweet, the attention it brings to what I call the world's greatest trade. There might be debate elsewhere, but I think it's an awesome trade and it's been good to me.”
So has the competition. Anliker is a three-time Pro Division winner, and his reputation preceded him to Nashville.
“You always have the heavy hitters,” said Anthony Kovalchick, an electrician from Wilmington, N.C. “I mean Roman (Ryszewski), Greg. You’ve got those guys, and normally this seems like it's a commercial-driven competition.
“This year it seems a little bit different, which is going to benefit me a little bit.”
As Kovalchick would learn later, that wasn’t the only thing that would benefit him in 2021.
Three-time champion Greg Anliker surveys the task at hand at the 2021 Electrician National Championships in Nashville, Tenn.
‘You’re my only competition’
First-time competitor Rusty Page knows about Anliker, too. And he wanted Anliker to know about him.
“First thing I did when I got here was I figured out where he was and I walked up and shook his hand,” Page said. “I said, ‘Hey, I'm Rusty Page and I'm going to be real honest with you: You're my only competition.’ Other than myself, that's the way I'm looking at it.”
Page said he knows he’s not the only one thinking that way.
“There are other guys here, I'm sure they think the same thing,” he said. “I want him to know my name, I want to know his name, we'll settle it on Friday.”
That’s fine with Anliker. For him, the competition is serious, but he keeps it friendly.
“I guess I don't worry about it,” Anliker said. “It's fun to win, but I don't mind someone else winning, too.”
Could Page, or anyone else, do that?
The scene at the 2021 Electrician National Championships in Nashville, Tenn.
‘It led me to the trades’
Noreen Buckley was a business analyst with a 9-to-5, white collar job. And she was frustrated.
“It's the same thing over and over,” she said. “The same jokes. Same coffee, pretzel, all that stuff. I wanted to make a career change, and if I did it I just wanted to do it once.”
She wrote down a list of the things she wanted as part of her workday. Things like wearing jeans and a hat, project-based work, something to complete and move on, and using her body.
“And it led me to the trades,” she said.
Buckley, competing as an apprentice in Nashville, is part of the Local 6 in San Francisco. She’s also co-founder of Tradeswomen Building Bridges, which promotes women in the trades.
“I played sports my whole life,” she said. “I still play recreational soccer in California. So the competitive part, I think it's just innate. You always want to win.”
She competed in the 2020 event, scaled down because of Covid, but Nashville was her first time competing in front of a crowd.
And she had a big booster in Nashville: Anliker.
“It's really great to hear him cheering me on, knowing that he's been through this,” Buckley said. “It's kind of a mixed bag because it's intimidating, seeing the pros and being like, ‘oh my gosh, can I do that?’ And then realizing that I could do that.”
She appreciated Anliker’s support.
“It means a lot,” Buckley said. “He probably knows a bunch of people here, and to have him in my corner cheering, it means he really believes in me and recognizes that I'm a good electrician.”
In Nashville, for the championship, there are lots of those.
Anthony Kovalchick, an electrician from Wilmington, N.C., competes in the 2021 Electrician National Championship in Nashville, Tenn.
‘It hits you like a bull’
The challenges at the national championship were graded by expert judges and timed, with the speed of completion acting as a tiebreaker.
The pace of the competition, though, is not an issue for Kovalchick. He works fast normally, a defense mechanism against his rheumatoid arthritis.
“I'm used to the speed, I'm used to the pace,” he said. “I have other guys tell me to always slow down. I'm like, I can't. I go fast because it keeps my mind off the pain.
“That's how I cope. If I stop, it hits you like a bull.”
Kovalchick has competed in every IDEAL Electrician National Championship, but came to Nashville never having advanced past the second round.
“You set those goals and you just want to do better than what you did the year before,” Kovalchick said. “And you come up short.”
For a moment in Nashville, Kovalchick thought he had come up short again. With nine of the 10 semifinalists announced, Kovalchick was still waiting. Then his name was called.
“It doesn't help when they call your name last,” he said. “Gives you about half a heart attack.”
Anliker, as expected, advanced. So did Ryszewski. This time, Kovalchick was with them.
“Surreal,” Kovalchick said. “You try every year and you finally make it.”
What would it take to make that last step, to be one of the five to advance to the final?
“Don't screw up,” Kovalchick said. “I'd like to make the final. That'd be fantastic. I don't know how much longer I’ve got it in me.”
The #1 newsletter for the trades.
‘Can’t beat it’
For Rusty Page, owner of Page Electric in Lexington, Ky., getting past the second round would have to wait. But he’s not discouraged after his first trip to the national championship. Hugs from his wife and kids help.
“Hey, top 30 in the United States,” Page said while holding his young daughter. “Can't beat it.”
Some things are part of the learning curve. Some, he won’t be able to change before the next championship competition, in Tampa in late 2022.
“Investing in some more IDEAL equipment would probably give me a little bit more of an edge,” he said. “During the semifinal, I didn't know how to use their circuit tracer. I have used other brands.
“And being short doesn't help. Hanging a 6-foot panel off a ladder is not a lot of fun by yourself.”
Page hopes to use publicity from qualifying for Nashville to help his growing company, with customers and potential employees.
“I can say, look, here's what I can do, I'm the owner of the company, but I also will never ask you to do something that I wouldn't be willing to do,” he said. “This competition, going home, having that publicity of a small company guy who teaches at the local school … “
Page choked up for a moment.
“To achieve all that so quickly, win or lose, I'm proud to be here and be in the trade that I'm in,” he said. “You can't buy that publicity.”
He’s planning to be back for Tampa. And he’ll tell Anliker, again, that he’s the competition.
“I will, absolutely,” Page said. “Right to his face. He is sort of the standard.”
The question is, would he be the standard in the 2021 final?
Greg Anliker is all about focus during the final competition.
‘A ton of teachers here’
Anliker, for one, appreciates the teachers in the crowd of competitors.
“There are a ton of teachers here,” he said. “There are people who want to make the next generation better electricians.”
Page is one of those guys. In addition to running his growing company, he’s the lead instructor at IEC of the Bluegrass in Lexington, teaching the apprenticeship school.
For the past three years, he has taken his students to National Championship qualifying events, preparing them by challenging them to beat his time. Then he challenges himself.
“If you all beat my time, I will come right back behind you and I will beat your time,” he said. “It's a constant challenge all night long.”
Page met other instructors from apprentice schools competing as pros in Nashville, too. One from Alaska. Another from California. Five or six in all, he said.
“We have that on our side as, hey, you're an instructor, I'm an instructor,” Page said. “But at the same time, we're here to compete.”
‘It’s family’
The announcement of the final five in the Pro Division isn’t as dramatic for Kovalchick as advancing to the semis. His name is called first. This time, Anliker is the last name called.
Anliker shakes hands all the way down the line, and gives Kovalchick a high five when he reaches him, then whispers something in his ear.
“We were talking about being called last, and I said, ‘Yeah, it's your turn,’” Kovalchick said.
It’s another example of the camaraderie among the electricians. They share a common bond, even with $60,000 on the line.
“It's fun for me to come here for the weekend,” Anliker said. “Not just competing, but every guy here understands what I'm talking about. I can go to work, come home, tell my wife and she maybe appreciates it, but she doesn't understand exactly. Here, you can just have any conversation and everyone here gets it because that's what they do, too.”
Whisked to the briefing room for the final immediately after the announcement, Kovalchick got a pleasant surprise: The final challenge was hooking up a generator.
Kovalchick’s home is in Wilmington, N.C., where frequent hurricanes make generators almost indispensable. He said he had installed as many as 10 in a week.
“I was excited, but when I saw it was a Kohler, not as much, because we don't install Kohlers,” Kovalchick said. “They hook up differently. But yeah, that was just like icing on the cake for challenges this year.”
Then, the camaraderie showed up again. The competitors got together to discuss the challenge as a group.
”This is a whole family,” Kovalchick said. “We're all supportive of each other. Down in the briefing room, we’re all there together, making up game plans. We're going over the instructions together.
“It's not like we're out to get each other. It's family. It's kind of hard to explain.”
Still, they’d all like to win.
Host Chip Wade interviews Greg Anliker during the championship round.
‘It’s about 98 percent solid’
The final challenge, a generator installation in 45 minutes, is a test. Kovalchick, with his experience installing generators, moved quickly, ahead of the pace of other competitors.
“He’ll probably clean up his work area before he hits the timer,” his wife said as Kovalchick worked, in between shouts of support.
Kovalchick finished fastest, did an interview for the broadcast, then greeted his family as the other competitors finished the task.
A glance toward another competitor turned his smile into an expression of frustration. He saw something he thought he should have done, but didn’t. And it irked him.
“I did good,” Kovalchick said later. “There's some stuff, now that I'm more level headed, you look back like, I could've done that, I could've done that, I could've done this. But for the most part, it's about 98% solid.”
Arthritis and all, he had done what he came to do.
“Right now everything in my body's screaming at me,” Kovalchick said. “Nothing's going to be perfect in competition, but it is what it is. It's fabulous. It really is. We'll see when they announce tonight how fabulous it is.”
‘And the winner is … ‘
Competitors and families gathered for the awards ceremony that evening, and Chip Wade took the mic to announce the winner. You can hear the murmur when Greg Anliker is named as the third-place finisher.
Second? Ryszewski, the only other competitor in the field to have won the Pro Division (in 2017, when Anliker finished second).
That left Kovalchick, Jeff Holota and Nathan Agnew. One would be the champion.
“The two guys beside me, I know they put in a good, hard fight,” Kovalchick said afterward. “Everyone makes mistakes. I know my mistakes. They said they made some mistakes, so it's a toss up at that point.”
“Tic-tac-toe, and just three to go,” Wade said. “$60,000. The winner of the Pro competition … is Anthony Kovalchick.”
Anthony Kovalchick, an electrician from Wilmington, N.C., is named the winner of the 2021 IDEAL Electrician National Championship in Nashville, Tenn.
‘I couldn’t be happier for him’
Anliker was gracious in defeat. The challenges, he said, are getting tougher. So are the competitors.
“Most definitely a more technical challenge,” he said. “And as the competition grows and more people are aware of it, more guys want to prove how good they are.”
To Anliker, Kovalchick did that this week, after years of National Championship disappointment.
“Oh, it's crazy,” Anliker said. “Anthony has been here every year since 2016. Always wins at state, comes, and he's never made it past the second round before. Then he shows up today, gets so excited to make it to the semifinals, ecstatic to make it to the final. And then he takes us down.
“I couldn't be happier for him. Great electrician and a great guy.”
The result also melted away any thought Kovalchick had about Nashville being his final National Championship. When the 2022 Electrician National Championship is held in Tampa, Fla., Kovalchick will be the defending champion.
“Now there's pressure? Is that what you're saying?” Kovalchick asked. “Tampa is closer to home. You'll see me again.”
Anliker, for one, is looking forward to it.
“We get to come after him,” he said, grinning. “It's nice not to be the main target.”
All the winners from the Electrician National Championships had plenty to celebrate.
ServiceTitan Software
ServiceTitan is a comprehensive software solution built specifically to help service companies streamline their operations, boost revenue, and substantially elevate the trajectory of their business. Our comprehensive, cloud-based platform is used by thousands of electrical, HVAC, plumbing, garage door, and chimney sweep shops across the country—and has increased their revenue by an average of 25% in just their first year with us.
