Welding student Josh Brewster works on a piece during class at Foothills Composite High School. Brewster won a gold medal at the SAIT Regional Skills Competition and advanced to the Provincials this weekend. photo by Darlene Casten |
By Darlene Casten
staff reporter
They are the proverbial butcher, baker and candlestick maker — a motley crue of girls and boys involved in the Foothills Composite High School’s trades programs.
Although they are a diverse group, from an aspiring pastry chef to a welder wanna-be, they are all united in the fact that they came, they saw and they conquered at SAIT’s Regional Skills Competition.
Some of the Comp’s trades students don’t know each other by name, but as they gathered in the cramped quarters of welding teacher Virgil Green’s office to talk about their accomplishments, they were handing out high fives and showing off prized cupcakes and homemade hammers like old friends.
Most of them didn’t compete together because the skills competition is held every weekend for almost two months, testing students in areas like auto mechanics, carpentry, precision welding and baking.
Each of the Comp students had their own hurdles
to overcome.
Janelle “Squeaky” Weisbeck is the only girl amongst five machining students. At the beginning of the year she was the only hold out for Regionals. But when the big day came “Squeaky” was the only Comp machinist to enter the competition.
Green said he loves telling the story of how his lone girl machinist learned how to operate a mill on the spot and turned out a prize winning hammer.
“We don’t have a good mill to work on here,” Green starts out with a huge grin on his face. “She had to operate a $50,000 machine that she had never operated before. What was even more impressive was her attitude about it.”
After a crash course on the machine, “Squeaky” just took it one step at a time.
“I played with the machine and figured out what to do to get the end result,” she said.
The playing paid off with a silver medal for a perfectly cut and polished solid metal hammer.
For aspiring cake decorator Jacklyn Brown time has been a hindrance. The Grade 12 student splits her time between baking, decorating and drama. As an actress in the school’s Mainstage production, Brown is busy rehearsing every day.
It is professional cooking teacher Greg Poile who has to work around Brown’s schedule to make sure the cupcake queen keeps her crown.
“I practice every Saturday after Mainstage for six hours,” she said.
At Regionals, Brown would have been stepping into unfamiliar territory with a choux paste, a French concoction that is similar to the pastry of a cream puff, but Poile made sure they whipped up a batch before the competition. That extra effort helped Brown win a gold medal at Regionals.
“(Poile) has been so helpful.”
Construction and carpentry student Stephen Wein is hobbling around on crutches, but that doesn’t stop him from picking up a hammer and helping out in the school’s shop.
As a senior member of the department, Wein, who also won a gold medals at Regionals, has helped in completing class projects, but is also called upon to fix up other projects, like sheds that are sold by the school to the public.
Now that Wein has completed every carpentry, cabinet making and construction class the school offers he has become a well-known handyman around town.
“People are always asking me to come over and fix their play houses and my mom is trying to get me to build a garden gazebo,” he said.
At Regionals Wein built a perfectly square wooden recycling box. The crowning touch though, were the mitre joints he built to cover the hinges.
“No one else did that,” he said. “The judges really liked it.”
Welder Josh Brewster was anxious as he sparked his torch in front of the judges.
“I was really nervous,” he said. “I’ve never been in a competition before.”
What got Brewster through was knowing his stuff. The Grade 11 student has completed all three levels of welding in two years and plans to be a teacher’s assistant next year. He led the Comp welders, taking the gold, followed by Jackson Framingham with silver and Teryn Parker took bronze.
Now that his first competition is behind him, Brewster said he is heading straight for the top.
“I want to win,” he said. “Only first place (in Provincials) get to go to Nationals.”
Next month the Comp trades students will meet again — this time in a much bigger room filled with kids from across the province, some wearing cooking aprons and others wearing welding aprons, but all with the same goal — to be the best.
The Provincial Skills Competition will be held May 22 and 23 at Stampede Park followed by Nationals May 25 to 28. Winners at Nationals will represent Canada at the World Skills Competition 2009.
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