While most people have been thinking about Olympic and Paralympic medals of late, a talented group of Princeton students struck gold and bronze at the Skills Canada competition held recently in Kamloops.
Princeton Secondary School shop teacher Matt LeClerc said the results from the local teams are astonishing given the size of schools here and the breadth of the competition.
“This was supposed to be a building year, to get our kids used to the competition, but they knocked it out of the park,” said LeClerc. “I’m pretty excited.”
Skills Canada competitions allow schools to pit their trade talents against one another.
“If you want to use a sports metaphor, it’s the trades playoffs,” said LeClerc.
Quinn Clarke, a Grade 11 student, won gold in the cabinetry competition.
“He had to make a wooden tool box that had a sliding shelf. He started it at 9 a.m. and finished it at 2:30 p.m. with a half hour break.”
Cole Harder and Dylan Gullison also competed for PSS and completed the senior team in the welding category.
Vermilion Forks Elementary School sent about 20 kids to the event, and two teams won medals in the very tense spaghetti bridge building competition.
Lacey Baird and Azlan Brewer took gold, and Kaelan Druck, Reid MacMurchy and Erik Gillerstedt won bronze.
The task set for them was to build a bridge of dry spaghetti and hot glue that could hold a one kilogram weight for one minute. The winners qualified by having the lightest bridge to hold the weight.
Baird and Azlan constructed a bridge that weighted only 120 grams.
The final testing of that competition was nerve wracking, said LeClerc.
“They knew that if their bridge would hold the weight they would win…It felt like ten minutes but it was only 60 seconds.”
One of the girls refused to exhale. “It was like she was holding her breath because if she breathed the bridge might not hold.”
The gold medal winners advance to the provincial finals.
“For me this is about telling the community how great our area is in trades…All these students are being told that trades are a viable career.”
