Over 25 Lewis, Herkimer, and Oneida County students from the Howard G. Sackett Technical Center competed in the New York State SkillsUSA Leadership & Skills Championships held April 24-26, 2019 in Syracuse. Of those, eleven students medaled in a total of nine categories.
SkillsUSA is a partnership of students, teachers and industry representatives working together to ensure America has a skilled workforce. It is a national membership organization serving middle-school, high-school and college/post-secondary students who are preparing for careers in trade, technical and skilled service occupations. Chapters are located locally at both the Charles H. Bohlen, Jr. Technical Center in Watertown and at the Howard G. Sackett Technical Center in Glenfield.
Each year, Career & Technical Education students from across New York State gather to compete against each other in various events involving trade skills, ranging from carpentry to computers. Often times, these are skills that employers are looking for when hiring. The judges in many of these competitions are those who work in that specific field or trade.
Winning first place gold medals this year were Tia Briot (Visual Communications II) of Beaver River in the Photography competition; Andrew Kirkwood from the Adult Ed Electrical Wiring program in the Electrical Construction Wiring competition; Abigayle Brouty (Visual Communications II) of Beaver River, Aimee Craddock (Visual Communications II) of South Lewis and Kristian Papineau (Visual Communications II) of Lowville in the Promotional Bulletin Board team competition. They will have the opportunity to represent New York State in the SkillsUSA National Conference held during the last week of June in Louisville, KY, competing against other students from across the country.
Winning second place silver medals this year were Aaron Mekkri (Visual Communications II) of Town of Webb Union Free School in the T-Shirt Design competition; Raymond Hastwell Jr. (Engineering & Design II) of Adirondack Central and Gavin Houppert (Engineeering & Design II) of Lowville in the Mobile Robotics Team competition.
Winning third place bronze medals this year were Chelsey Hancock (Cosmetology II) of Copenhagen in the Customer Service competition; Jared Houppert (Engineering & Design II) of Lowville in the Technical Drafting competition; and Jade Howard (Nursing Assistant) of Adirondack in the Medical Terminology competition.