Regional scores record medal count

It was a banner year for Yorkton Regional High School in skills competitions this year. While the school regularly punches above its weight class in provincial events, a total of 10 medals, including six gold, at the 18th Annual Skills Canada Competition and Try-a-Trade Expo held in Regina April 22, exceeded expectations.

“This is likely the best achievement that YRHS has ever had,” said Chad McDowell, Practical and Applied Arts department head, crediting extra-curricular time and effort of the students and teachers Carmella Lutz, Don Tkachuk, Eugene Pawliw, Kevin Chiasson, Terry Cornelius and Sarah Greensides.

Carter Park (electrical wiring), Aaron Leegwater (auto service), Karysma Schneider (Esthetics) and Cassie Jones (photography) took home individual gold medals.

In addition, the robotics team of Brock Chiasson, Brent Guenther, James Theissen and Sean Furber made that program tops in the province for the fourth time in five years. Another YRHS robotics team consisting of Shane Toma, Christian Hansen and Dakota Haberman took the bronze.

Earlier in April, YRHS Robotics was also successful in defending its MyRobot Rumble Sumobot title in Saskatoon. Despite an early disqualification for their bot being overweight (they had put too much electrical tape on it), Blake Chiasson and Matthew Breitkreuz beat out 120 other teams to prevail in the competition.

Rounding out the medal haul at the Skills Canada event were Briana Wosminity with silver in creative braiding, Jed Stachura with bronze in precision machining and Mya Desmarais with bronze in public speaking.

McDowell was proud of all the accomplishments, but made specific not of the public speaking bronze medal because the school had never entered that category before.

“We’d seen it there in the past few years and we thought it was something that we thought our students would do extremely well at because we have a lot of very strong programming outside of PAA at the school and this was something we could try bring another aspect to the school,” he said. “It was really exciting that we had zero experience at it, but we still ended up getting a bronze medal.”

Park, Jones, Leegwater and the gold medal robotics group will be moving on to the national championship in New Brunswick in June.