While most of the Central High School student body was out enjoying their long awaited spring break, our school’s Skills USA members were out competing and winning medals in the Skills USA State Competition. The competition was held at the Chattanooga Convention Center and began on the Monday of our spring break, April 14. It ended on the Friday of our spring break, April 18, when the winners were announced and the awards were given out.

In total, there were eight members of the Skills USA team from Central competing. Five out of those eight members received awards. Jack Bailey won the bronze in Principles of Technology, Nathaniel Nalley won the bronze in Architectural Drafting, and as a group, Brandon Lewis, Corey Quinn, and Brett Kransky won the silver in Engineering Technology.

“Each Skills USA team competing has to go through a general form of test in whichever field they are competing in. There are three phases of almost all the tests. There is a presentation phase, modeling phases, and an assembly phase,” stated Mr. Keith Bright, the Skills USA sponsor.

There were hundreds of schools participating at the week-long competition, but not all of them were going against Central.

“We were only competing with some of the schools because some of them don’t have the same fields that Central has. For example, there were only about 16 schools competing in the Architectural Drafting and Engineering Technology fields with Central,” explained Bright.

Skills USA has been working hard all year to get to the state competition, and their hard work definitely showed.

“I am really proud of the guys for doing as well as they did. They did a great job and we left the competition with a great number of successes,” said Bright, “I couldn’t have asked for a better job from them.”