Kelly Lamb, left, Nicholas Doucette, Jesse Hamm and Cole Bear (Michael Joel-Hansen/paNOW Staff)

By Michael Joel-Hansen

Skills Canada

Carlton students bring home medals from competition

Apr 19, 2019 | 10:56 AM

Students from Carlton Comprehensive High School had a successful trip to the provincial Skills Canada Competition in Saskatoon and Regina last week.

The competition saw students from all over the province compete against each other in a wide array of areas ranging from precision machining to prepared speech and nearly everything in between.

In total the school sent 16 competitors, who brought home a total of six medals. One of the gold medalists was Nicholas Doucette, a Grade 12 student, who won his medal in the precision machining competition.

“Precision machining is basically just making parts on a metal lay, just stuff for other machines,” he said.

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At the competition, Doucette’s work was judged on a number of levels, like cutting a thread and grooving. Before they started those in the competition were given a sheet with what they needed to do and how many points they were to be awarded.

“Just everything a machinist needs to know how to do,” he said.

Coming out on top at provincials was a nice surprise for the Grade 12 student, who is looking to take on a career in the trade when he is finished high school.

“It was just a total surprise, I’d worked very hard for it and I was so excited to hear my name called for gold,” he said.

The next stop for Doucette is the national competition in Halifax next month, where he will have the chance to test his skills against higher level competition.

“It’s going to be a big step up from this one, but I feel confident, that I have a good teacher showing me what I need to know,” he said.

Besides Doucette, Jesse Hamm, a Grade 11 student, took home a bronze medal in the precision machining category. Cole Bear a grade 11 student brought home a bronze medal in mechanical cad, Theoren Chamberlain won a silver medal on the auto body side, while Emily White brought home the second gold for Carlton from the baking competition.

Along with the more traditional trades, Carlton was also represented in the prepared speech portion of the competition by Kelly Lamb a Grade 10 student.

Lamb explained for her category, she had to prepare a speech one month in advance. The competition as well asks people in this category to watch all the other competitions going on and at the end asks them to answer a question about what they watched.

For this year’s event, Lamb had to do a speech on environmental sustainability in the trades, besides reduce, reuse and recycle.

“It’s really hard because most of the other trades you get marked based on quality and that you can visually see differences, but when it comes to prepared speech … it’s kind of subjective, because everyone gets the same topic, but they can write it in different styles,” she said.

MichaelJoel.Hansen@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @mjhskcdn