LAMAR, Mo. — Eleven students in Southwest Missouri are headed to a national competition after winning big at the state level.
Justin Aldridge is a student at the Lamar Career and Technical Center.
He entered three competitions at the Missouri State Skills USA competition recently and swept them all.
“I went into the written test for precision machining and won first place in that, I went into the CNC programming at the state level and ended up getting first place in that as well, and I entered Quiz Bowl with a few other students here at LCTC and we ended up taking first place in that as well,” said Justin Aldridge, Three-Time State SkillsUSA State Champion.
On that same quiz bowl team are two other LCTC students, Chloe Cornelison, and Ty Force.
“It was so much fun when we got to come together and just do something that none of us had really participated in before,” said Chloe Cornelison, SkillsUSA Quiz Bowl Team Member.
Success at SkillsUSA is nothing new for LCTC despite it being one of the smallest Technical Centers in the entire state of Missouri.
“Coming from such a great LCTC program and everything, we just knew what to do and completely blew everybody else out of the water,” said Ty Force, SkillsUSA Quiz Bowl Team Member.
The students attend LCTC half the day, and each of the three are from much smaller high schools that don’t have their own technical center.
Kelly Heiskell is the program’s career counselor and went through LCTC when she attended high school in Lamar, and she knows how high the bar has been set.
“I think it says we have excellent staff and instructors and excellent students as well, our instructors really work hard to make our students industry ready,” said Kelly Heiskell, LCTC Career Counselor, SkillsUSA Lead Advisor.
All three are seniors and they, along with several other team members, will now head to the national competition, June 19th-23rd in Atlanta.
