Northwest High School students Chloe Ziegler and Kaleb Ward will soon use their talents in the kitchen and the workshop in the Missouri SkillsUSA competition.
Ziegler, a junior from Dittmer, splits her time between Northwest High, where she takes classes, and the Jefferson College Area Technical School, where she is enrolled in the culinary arts program. She placed second in the culinary arts discipline at the Feb. 2 competition held at Jefferson College.
Ward, a senior at Northwest High from the Fenton area, also is enrolled in the ATS at Jefferson College and placed second in the carpentry discipline at the Feb. 2 competition.
“(The competition) was a great experience,” Ward said. “I wanted to do something that I can later look back on and be like, ‘Wow, I did that. I’m proud of what I did.’”
The Northwest students will travel to the state competition set for April 4-6 at the State Technical College of Missouri in Linn. SkillsUSA highlights student achievement in various trades, including welding, advertising, and pastry arts, according to the organization’s website.
“Kaleb and Chloe exemplify the hard work, dedication and perseverance required to succeed in their chosen areas,” said Northwest High Principal Stella Viehland. “We are proud of their achievement in SkillsUSA and can’t wait to see where their futures take them.”
Ziegler said she placed third at last year’s district competition and didn’t move on to the state competition, which has culinary students demonstrate their knife skills, create an appetizer and entree and fabricate a chicken, which means to cut up an entire chicken.
“I really wanted to make state last year and I didn’t,” Ziegler said. “I’m really excited but really nervous for state this year. The timing for everything is different. It’s a whole new menu, so we’ve got to crack down on learning it.”
Chef Garrett Miller, Ziegler’s culinary arts instructor, said first and second-place finishers in the district competition move on to the state competition.
He said Ziegler did a fantastic job at districts this year, and he is confident she will perform well.
Ziegler will join Nerik Stricklin and Serenity Evans, also in the ATS culinary program, at the state competition.
“I feel very good about her standing,” Miller said. “It comes down to how much work she’s going to put into it. The students we have this year specifically, they’re putting a lot of work in. It’s exciting to see.”
For the competition in carpentry discipline, Ward said he had to take a written test and then build a structure based on provided blueprints. He was given three hours to construct a 4-by-4-foot building.
Kaleb Ward, a senior at Northwest High School, works on a small structure for the SkillsUSA district competition.
Ward said about six carpenters built their structures at the same time. Only he and one other student were able to complete their builds in the time given.
“With the basic knowledge we’ve learned over the past few years, we (Ward and the other competitors) were able to build it up,” Ward said. “It was definitely pretty complicated.”
Ward will join first-place finisher Elliot Busch, also a student at Jefferson College’s ATS, at the state competition. This is Ward’s second year in the ATS carpentry program.
He said his first-year instructor, Michael Griggs, encouraged him to sign up for the competition and offered useful advice, especially for the test.
“My teacher gave us a pretty good test-taking strategy: If you don’t know the answer, put something down and move on,” Ward said. “I got stumped on a question, so I just went ahead and wrote some stuff down and then I got to the workshop and began my building.”
Griggs, an associate professor in residential carpentry at ATS, said he has helped Ward and Busch brush up on some skills before the competition. Not only did they review the literal nuts and bolts of framing a structure, but also they focused on reading blueprints and “pruning” the instructions for the most important details.
He said he enjoys working with the students.
“I think a large part of education is the relationships,” Griggs said. “I can’t make kids do things, but if I can motivate them, then they can find success on their own terms. I’ll go back up and talk to (Ward), brag on him for being a district champ. We’ll continue to let him celebrate that success and let that success be self-motivating.”
Ziegler said she was nervous before the district competition began, but preparing with Miller has eased her nerves. For the competition, she prepared a few dishes for a panel of judges. They included chilled, poached shrimp avocado jicama slaw and pan-seared chicken with jasmine rice pilaf and sauteed carrots.
“As the day (of the competition) was getting closer, the stress was slowly building up,” Ziegler said. “My anxiety was rising, but whenever you just do something you’ve always done, it just flows. It’s like everything disappeared and I was just cooking, and it felt amazing.”
After he graduates from high school in May, Ward said he plans to work full-time as a carpenter for a St. Louis-based home-building company.
“I’m excited about his potential as a carpenter in the field and about where it can take him in life,” Griggs said.
Ziegler plans to earn an associate degree in culinary arts and then pursue a degree in her second love – environmental studies or meteorology.
“I plan on keeping culinary always in my sights, and if I get a chance, I’m going to open my restaurant or even find a cool restaurant and try to head it,” Ziegler said. “I love cooking. I’ll never stop cooking.”