FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) - For someone who swore he’d never become an electrician, Cory Koop has turned into a pretty good one.
The 23-year-old North Pole resident represented Alaska at the Associated Builders and Contractors National Craft Championships earlier this month, competing against some of the top apprentices in the country. It didn’t seem like a stretch for Koop, whose family tree is filled with electricians, but he admits it would have seemed like a surprising development not long ago.
Koop had a chance to see the life of an electrician up close - his father, Paul, is an electrical contractor who owns Bright Services in North Pole. Cory was on job sites at such an early age that he remembers his father attaching wheels to a 2-by-4 to turn it into an improvised toy.
The novelty of those visits wore off quickly. Koop said he helped his dad as a teen with unpleasant tasks such as hand-digging beneath buildings and climbing into signs to change light bulbs.
“I hated it,” he said. “I swore I’d never be an electrician.”
Instead of wiring houses, Koop’s plan was to study marine biology. He’d traveled to a dolphin reserve in Australia as a 16-year-old volunteer, and headed to Maine after graduating from North Pole High School to earn his degree.
But during his freshman year, Koop realized living by the ocean would compete with his other passion: snowboarding. He’d been a competitive snowboarder since high school, practicing his moves on the icy slopes of Birch Hill.
Koop decided he loved the sport too much to give it up. He returned home to study at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, but his father made a convincing pitch that he should give an electrician’s apprenticeship a try.
Someone with a trade can earn a living almost anywhere, he said, which would give Cory more options after he earned his license. The pattern had worked for Cory’s father, grandfather and two uncles.
“Once you know what you can do, it’s not work anymore,” Paul Koop said.
Cory said the complexities of electrical work clicked for him soon after starting the apprentice program in 2010.
“I love it now, but I’m kind of bummed because I didn’t take to it right away,” Cory said. “If I’d been retaining all that knowledge I’d be so much farther ahead.”
At his father’s urging, Koop entered and won his division in the Alaska Craft Championships in Anchorage this year, giving him a $1,200 prize and a trip to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The “trade Olympics” included hundreds of competitors from 12 different crafts, representing 32 states.
“Our employees do everything - we push hard for them to do that,” Paul Koop said. “I know he’d have a knack to go down there for the competition.”
At the national competition Koop was introduced to a stack of materials roughly his height. He was tasked with a complex series of goals, including a complex wiring pattern and pipe-bending, with a 6-hour window to finish it in the steamy Florida heat.
“You can’t even think about it, otherwise you start to get frantic,” he said. “It’s not your average workplace. Your nerves are racked, everyone’s watching.”
Thirty-eight apprentices competed, but not one of them finished. Koop said he was one of a few who got close, but figures his score on an extensive written test probably knocked him out of contention. Only the top three finalists were revealed, so Koop didn’t find out how close he was to the podium, but he left feeling like he held his own against the best in the country.
“I didn’t place top three, so I must have been fourth,” he said with a smile.
It’ll be Koop’s last visit to the event, which is open to third- and fourth-year apprentices. He completed enough hours to achieve journeyman status last November, but still is sorting through the paperwork to become officially licensed.
He may pursue other goals, including a stay in Europe next year and possibly an engineering degree, but said he has no regrets about the direction the past four years have taken.
“I’m going to do some other work, but I’ll always be an electrician,” he said.
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Information from: Fairbanks (Alaska) Daily News-Miner, https://www.newsminer.com
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