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Students from Brennan and St. Anne high schools dominated the field in a provincewide competition that showcased proficiency in the skilled trades.
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Three students from St. Anne swept the medals in the CNC Woodworking category while three more from Brennan owned the podium in the Brick and Masonry category at the recent virtual Skills Ontario competition.
Students were required to complete a designated task that would demonstrate level of skill.
St. Anne’s David Hanratty won the gold medal in CNC Woodworking while Brennan’s Matthieu Bernard took gold in Brick and Masonry.
We practiced it before the competition and that really helped
Bernard and all the competitors in that category had to construct a brick pier similar to a chimney stack meeting all the required specifications.
“Matt is stellar,” said Brennan teacher Marko Senjanin. “When I finished it was right on the money. It was the right height, it was perfectly square, perfectly plumbed and perfectly straight.”
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Senjanin said Bernard was also the first in the field to finish, completing the pier in four of the six hours allotted by the judges.
“We practiced it before the competition and that really helped,” Bernard said. “You were able to ask questions and our teacher could give us some pointers.”
Teachers and those on hand for the actual competition were not allowed to advise or interact with the students on that day.
Bernard, 18, graduated from Grade 12 early and has since been hired by Contact Masonry.
Not bad for a guy who took a masonry class by chance in Grade 9.
“They gave it to me as one of my extras and I did well in it and really enjoyed it,” Bernard said.
Hanratty and others in his field were tasked with designing and producing a piece depicting COVID-19 in the trades.
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Hanratty’s piece showed an electrician, a construction worker and a culinary worker emerging from a COVID virus molecule.
“The COVID molecule was symbolizing how COVID was so prevalent in our day-to-day lives and how the workers are now breaking through to get things back up and running,” the 16-year-old said.
Hanratty’s teacher Mike Costello noted “his quality of work was really good.”
Costello said all five students who entered drew their designs by hand first and then had to learn how to import and program it for a CNC machine.
“We were a little pressed for time trying to learn all that but it was fun learning the codes and how to program it,” Hanratty said.
The silver medal in that category went to St. Anne’s Nate Rodzik and the bronze was won by St. Anne’s Michael Edgar.
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Finishing right behind Bernard were Brennan’s Lauren Bayn with silver and Madison Vasile with bronze.
“This is like the student Olympics of skilled trades in Ontario, and we are absolutely thrilled with the way our students performed,” said Cory McAiney, the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board’s Teacher Consultant for Technological Studies.
While students in the Catholic board have won medals at Skills Ontario in the past, this marks the first and second time they have swept a category.
“Over the last several years we have placed a great deal of emphasis on encouraging our students to explore more of the exciting careers that exist in the skilled trades sector,” said Emelda Byrne, director of education. ” It’s very rewarding to see students taking advantage of the opportunities we provide them and performing so well at the provincial level. Judging by the way they performed in this competition, I’m sure these students have very bright futures ahead of them.”
