By Shirley Shuman
On March 28-29, six CTE students began what Braxton County High teachers, especially instructor and advisor Zach Lyons and the CTE teachers, hope will be regular competition in the annual SkillsUSA West Virginia Leadership and Skills Conference. Lyons explained that the students competing came from Project Lead the way, Cosmetology, Carpentry, and Electrical. They competed in areas relating to their classes.
Two Braxton students, Alley White and Brian Davis, won gold medals. White’s award came in Beginner Cosmetology and Davis’s came in Architectural Drafting. Other students who competed and their area of competition included Travis Putnam in Architectural Drafting, Ashton Lunceford in Carpentry, James Johnson in Construction Tool Identification, and Shawn Toler in Electrical Construction Wiring.
Instructors who worked with these students to prepare them to compete were Ethan Backus, Erica Samples, Cherlyn McCourt, Robert Lloyd, and Keith Greene.
White discussed her competition and her reaction to winning. “I had a lot of practice to prepare for this competition, but I did not expect to win, “ she said. According to Samples, one of her instructors, White had to compete in two areas—a roller set and comb-out and responding to a phone call from a prospective client asking for an appointment. The young student commented that the set and comb-out “were hard because there were so many people watching.” She also felt she “struggled” on the call, although instructor Samples did not feel that she had.
Samples explained that as soon as Braxton opened a chapter for SkillsUSA at the beginning of the year she and her co-teacher, McCourt, were determined to have one of their students compete. They chose White whom Samples described as “very talented,” and worked to prepare her for the March competition. She added, “We are so proud of her, and we were very emotional when she won. She never complained, and she worked hard. She wanted to win.”
Brian Davis commented that he was unsure he would have time to complete the task required in his competition. He continued, “I did have time, and I was very fortunate to understand what they were asking. There were a couple of things I was unclear about but I was able to overcome that.” Davis added, “I was surprised that I won because there were a couple more experienced contestants.” Eight students competed in Architectural Drafting and Design.
Backus compli-mented both of his students who competed. “I am extremely proud of the work Travis and Brian put into this competition, both before and during. We went into this competition a little blind. However, both students rose to the challenge and represented the school well,” he said. “Brian did a great job. He was not able to take the pre-engineering class on civil engineering and architecture last year so he was a bit behind when we started. However, he picked up the software quickly and learned a lot in a short time,” he added.