Scot Wilcox's summer plan includes reading Fyodor Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment."

It's not summer reading, nor is it a punishment. He's actually doing it for fun.

What was not part of his summer plan, at least until the end of June, was becoming the national champion in a technical drafting competition that pitted the Timpview High graduate against other technically savvy high-school grads. That was just a perk.

Wilcox was one of several Utah County students who attended this year's SkillsUSA national competition in Kansas City, Mo., at the end of June. Thirty-nine contestants in 25 categories went from UVU, while about a third of those came home with medals. Three Timpview High grads went, with one gold medal, and two Lehi students earned silver medals. UVU also had the second-most medals in the competition, and Utah had the second-highest number of medalists.

"Primarily the reason the state took second was because of the number of medals that UVU picked up," said Darin Taylor, chairman of the engineering department at UVU and the SkillsUSA director.

SkillsUSA is a nationwide program geared toward trades and other skills that will help students in the workforce. The categories include drafting, firefighting and CPR, media editing and production, automotive and aviation maintenance, carpentry, dental assisting, plumbing, nail care, photography and more. More than 300,000 students are involved.

"We're all about engaged learning, hands-on learning," Taylor said. "It doesn't get any better than SkillsUSA, because that's exactly what happens with these students."

The competition includes written and oral tests on those subjects as well as practical work in each area. Students also are required to submit a résumé. The idea, the teachers said, is to prepare students for the workforce by giving them these tools and the confidence and then introducing them to the real world of their chosen trade. That's why colleges don't plan the SkillsUSA competitions. Engineers, drafters, firefighters and producers do.

"It's not done by the educators," Taylor said. "We actually have folks who come from industry who put the contest together."

The trophies in this competition look a little different too. Scholarships, job offers, laptops, software and tools of one's trade are common booty for the national participants -- so much so, in fact, that Salt Lake Community College sends a trailer to Kansas City to bring home the power saws, computers, drills and other prizes that students don't have room for on the plane home. Dave Creer, the Timpview drafting teacher who retired this year, said all three of his students were offered a one-year full-tuition scholarship to UVU.

"Most employers around here, especially in architectural and technical drafting areas, are very familiar with SkillsUSA," he said. "If they are interviewing these students that have done well in these contests they know they've got a pretty high caliber of kid."

What it's like

The competition starts out in the individual schools, and those winners move onto the state competition, which took place at Salt Lake Community College in April. The state champions in each category then move onto the national competition. For some, that's when the hard part comes.

"State was pretty easy, and so I won that, and that wasn't hard," said 18-year-old Wilcox.

He and fellow Timpview grad Josh Moffat, who competed in computer-aided design architectural drafting, were preparing for a grueling eight-hour examination in drafting that would look exactly the same as the exam the college students would be taking. For a high-school student, it's no cakewalk.

"It's a pretty complex project that they have to pump out in a matter of eight hours," Creer said. "It's geared more toward the higher end, so it's a pretty challenging situation for a high-school student."

The students worked with Creer on specific problems, as well as taking last year's tests. Taylor did this with his students as well. Once the state competition was over, faculty members worked with the winners individually to prepare them for the national competition. Some of that preparation includes looking at how other places do tasks like designing a building, since the state competitions all look different from each other and from the national tournament.

Weeks of cramming, practicing and answering questions land each of the winners into a classroom where they're given the same assignment and told to get to work.

"So there's 100 people in a room drawing the same set of house plans," Taylor said.

The stress didn't leave even when the tests looked familiar. Joy Stearns, who just finished paramedic school at UVU, is a firefighter by trade, so competing in firefighting shouldn't have been too bad. Throw in the element of the unknown, though, and she knew she had a challenge.

"It was kind of nerve-wracking because I knew some of the components for it, but I didn't know what all to expect," Stearns said. "I think my biggest thing was hoping I could keep up with them all."

Getting involved

Students said they got involved when they heard about the competition in class or professors talked to them about SkillsUSA. Stearns knew paramedic students who had participated and done well, so she figured she could compete at a high level. Taylor said he figures students hear about some of the prizes and want to score a laptop or a power saw.

UVU has taken a large group back annually for years, and for the last nine years they have gotten first or second in the overall number of medals. Taylor attributes that success in part to faculty members who are willing to seek out and cultivate the talented students combined with good hands-on classes and programs.

"There's no question it starts with a quality student," he said.

Timpview also makes the trip to Kansas City annually, Creer said. In the 14 years he has gone to nationals, students have won eight medals and placed in the top 10 rankings a number of times. Generally the seniors are the ones who make the cut, since they have more experience in the subjects, but once he had a student qualify his junior and senior years and win second place both times.

The state and school district combine to pay $500 per student for the trip, and the students or their families pay the rest, or they find donations, he said. At UVU, the school has a budget for the program as well as some private donations.

What happens next

Utah Highway Patrol trooper Brett Christensen, who placed first in the criminal justice competition for UVU, could see the life application in the competitions. He saw a Utah high-school student who competed in the criminal justice division and said that young man would be a step ahead in pursuing a career in law enforcement.

"I see cadets going through the police academy and new recruits that just graduated from the academy and coming out, and anytime they can have that kind of experience it's valuable," Christensen said, adding that the competition pumps an added level of stress that training doesn't have. "It kind of ratchets up the adrenaline a little bit for them, so I think it's a very valuable tool."

It also provides connections, Taylor said. Frequently the judges at the national competition will talk to students about job opportunities at their businesses, and he knows a number of participants who have gotten work because of connections made in Kansas City. Wilcox, who will go to BYU for mechanical engineering in the fall, said this will provide a good step up for those more-involved classes.

Plus, said Christensen, who won't compete next year but wants to participate in a mentoring role, the competition was a good time, a sentiment seconded by other participants.

"The fun part was looking and see how much excitement they all had to be there, to be competing, to try and do well for them, for their school, for their families," he said.

Joy Stearns

Joy Stearns beat out 47 men to place second in a highly physical national firefighting competition.

On her way back to the audience, her cell phone rang. She answered it to find that her husband, also a firefighter, had just been killed. A tree fell on him while he was working on a BLM tree abatement project.

"It was like a high ... and then the biggest low in my life right after," the Utah Valley University student said.

Stearns was one of several students who represented UVU at the SkillsUSA Championships in Kansas City in June. The West Jordan firefighter took some time off work to go to medical school, and getting back into the field at a national competition didn't take away all the butterflies. In a way, that made her more nervous.

"That was another stressful thing about it," she said. "I thought, 'I'd better do good because I do this for a living.' "

Stearns was one of only two women to qualify at the postsecondary level, which may have made it all the harder for her to break in, said Darin Taylor, the SkillsUSA director for UVU. He called it a "good old boys club" and a strenuous competition that included dragging hoses and dummies through an obstacle course.

All of the test components, including a written test, an interview and a physical agility test, were finished two days before the winners were announced, so she had an anxious 48 hours that ended as the second-place winner's name was read.

"All of a sudden I'm looking around, and everybody's like, 'That's you,' " she said. "And I was like, 'Really?' "

She also set the pushup record for women in Utah -- 39, she said. Another UVU student who was with her broke the men's record with more than 50 pushups.

Stearns commuted from Craig, Colo., where her husband worked, to her job in West Jordan. She said she will start work toward an associate degree, then a bachelor's in health promotion and nutrition, or some health-related subject.

Brett Christensen

Brett Christensen is the first to admit he kind of had a head start in his competition.

The licensed trooper for the Utah Highway Patrol was surrounded by younger college students when he competed in the criminal justice competition for SkillsUSA. So the test wasn't just over what he learned in class, it was what he did every day at work.

"They set up very realistic scenarios, and it's basic, entry-level police work that they ask them to do," he said. "It's everyday stuff for a working police officer."

That said, he had a good time participating and seeing how excited other participants were to be there. All were there in the process of advancing their educations and their careers, and that's what brought Christensen back to college in spite of his full-time job. He's thought about law school, city management and other pursuits.

"Pretty much anything post-law enforcement I'm going to need a degree to kind of get my foot in the door," he said.

Christensen said he probably won't compete again, even though he still has more school ahead. Because of his background, he thinks helping other students train and prepare for their competitions will be more rewarding.

"I would prefer to help some younger kids that are just getting started to be able to go back and compete and do well," he said, adding that's how he felt the competition was really designed to be.

• Heidi Toth can be reached at (801) 344-2556 or htoth@heraldextra.com.

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