Several Innisfail and area students are working their way to successful careers in the trades after impressive showings in the provincial and national skills competitions over the last month.
Leading the way is current WorldSkills Team Canada member and Innisfail native Luke Moore. Moore qualified for team Canada in CNC Milling more than a year ago and has since been training to compete in the London 2011 WorldSkills competition.
He recently graduated from SAIT Polytechnic and earned his Red Seal Machining Ticket, which ended his trades schooling and apprenticeship.
“I am really excited and glad to have accomplished it,” said Moore of earning his ticket. Until the WorldSkills competition in October, Moore will be continuing to work at Onsite Machining Solutions in Innisfail and will continue to train for the competition once a week at Red Deer College.
Moore also travelled to Quebec earlier this month to the National Skills Competition where a new group of young trades people competed in each of their chosen skills.
One of those young people was Scott McAllister, a 20-year-old Innisfail Junior Senior High School (IHS) graduate that qualified for nationals in the Industrial Mechanic/Millwright trade. McAllister is currently in his fourth year of his apprentice program after beginning his training in high school through the Registered Apprentice Program (RAP).
McAllister said that he decided to become a millwright because it is kind of a jack of all trades and he knew it would give him a lot of useful skills that he could take back to his family farm, which he hopes to take over some day. At the national competition in Quebec, McAllister earned a silver medal in what he said was a tough challenge.
“The competition was definitely a tricky because every province has a little different way of teaching but the concept is basically the same and I was able to work out the problems,” said McAllister.
McAllister will not qualify for the National team because with the Worldskills competitions taking place only every two years, this year is not a qualifying year for worlds. Next year McAllister will be too old to compete but said it was a great experience to be able to go to nationals.
Two other area high school students still have a ways to go but after medaling at the provincial competition last month are close to following in the footsteps of their older peers.
Trevor Leslie, a Grade 11 student at IHS earned a silver medal in IT and Network Support at the provincial skills competition after teaching himself how to fix computers.
Starting in Grade 7, Leslie began playing around with old computer systems and eventually got to the point where he started fixing his friends and families computers. Through a number of online tutorials and a keen interest in figuring out how computers work the self-taught computer wiz earned a spot in the provincial skills competition.
“It felt pretty good (to come second) and now that I have a feel for it I will be more prepared next time,” said Leslie.
Notre Dame High School student Lewis Staples, who lives just north of Innisfail, competed in provincials in electrical wiring and won bronze in the competition.
Staples became interested in wiring through a teacher at his school who is a journeymen electrician. He hopes to go on to take engineering after high school and possibly become an electrical engineer, but for now said that he was just happy to have won bronze in the competition.
“I felt that I performed well in the competition for the amount of training I had received. I am very happy with how I did,” said Staples.
Several other Innisfail Junior Senior High School students competed in the Skills competition at the regional level, which took place on April 28 at Red Deer College.
Aric Duffy and Alex Hiscocks competed in carpentry and Wyatt Sparks and Ben Cook competed in Welding. Sparks and Cook are both members of RAP and are completing work experience hours at Bilton Welding & Manufacturing Ltd. and X-Treme Energy Group Inc. in Innisfail.
Darren Thomas also participated in the competition taking part in a mocktails workshop learning how to create and garnish non-alcoholic beverages.
