Four ISD Students Qualify for National SkillsUSA Championships

Posted April 5, 2016

Gold medal-winning efforts by three William Chrisman drafting and precision machining students and a Van Horn computer networking student earned the foursome a trip to the 2016 National SkillsUSA Championships in Louisville June 22-23. Chrisman’s Aaron Collier, Jacob Moore and Dylan Dennis- members of the automated manufacturing technology team- captured the gold during the state SkillsUSA competition at Linn State Technical College in Linn, Mo.  Van Horn’s Jonathan Diaz took first place in Internetworking by demonstrating excellence in several specialties including cable building, network configuration, troubleshooting and professionalism in work ethic.

Several Chrisman and Van Horn students placed during the four-day event, competing against more than 2,500 students from across the state in a variety of categories ranging from culinary arts and nursing to construction and diesel mechanics. “Students came from secondary, vocational and post-secondary schools across Missouri, making the competition very challenging,” said Verne Leutzinger, Chrisman engineering and math teacher and a co-sponsor of the school’s SkillsUSA program.

Other Chrisman participants who excelled on the state level include Aimee Dietiker- third-place Architectural Drafting Skills, Alex Fry- third-place Technical Drafting Skills, Collier- fourth-place Automated Manufacturing Technology, Moore- fifth-place Automated Manufacturing Technology, Cody Davis- fifth-place Architectural Drafting Skills and Abigail Stark- sixth-place Technical Drafting Skills and 17th-place Technical Drafting Information. These students placed in the top three in district competition to qualify for state.

“SkillsUSA is very demanding and these students proved to be top in their fields by placing well in this competition,” Leutzinger said.

The ISD national qualifiers join more than 6,000 other career and technical education students competing against each other in 100 different trade, technical and leadership fields.