Centralia Students Win State CTE Competition, Qualify For SkillsUSA

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Centralia High School students are heading to a national career and technical conference again this year, after winning a state competition that involved building an “itsy-bitsy tiny house” in just a few hours.

Four students on the Centralia High School team — Inchantra Armitage, Kallighan Farda, Brock Terry and Justus Kuykendall — won the SkillsUSA TeamWorks state competition, and will now move onto the national SkillsUSA competition.

“They’re pumped,” said Centralia High School teacher Mitchell Smith. “They’re excited. It was a pretty cool day in construction class today.” 

This is the second year Armitage and Farda have qualified for the national competition.

“It’s pretty neat to see students get involved in what builds a future,” said Jake Keehr, a judge for Tuesday’s competition, a Centralia High School graduate and the first Centralia student to ever qualify twice for the SkillsUSA national competition. “I have that by example — I’m a union carpenter because of SkillsUSA.”

SkillsUSA is a career and technical student organization. The National Leadership and Skills Conference takes place annually in Louisville, Kentucky.

The students competed in a day-long competition at the Southwest Washington Fairgrounds against five other schools in Washington for the state title. Each team had four members that consisted of a carpenter, electrician, plumber and mason. 

“The idea here is that on the job site you are going to have multiple trades working with each other, all the time pretty much,” Smith said. “You have to learn to work together. This (competition) is based upon how they (students) work together, just as much as it is based upon the knowledge of their individual trades.”



Competitors came to the fairgrounds and looked at the plans for a small, 4x8 building. Students made a plan on how to approach the project as a team, then spoke to the judges for 15 minutes about their plan, project approach, and how they planned to utilize their team’s strengths.

“We are calling it the ‘itsy-bitsy tiny house,’” Smith said. “It’s going to have an electrical panel in it. It’s going to have a switch and a light and a plug. Then there is going to be a roof on the thing. … Then they are going to have to put the thing together — every little piece counts.”

After speaking with the judges, students took a written general knowledge test on carpentry, masonry, electrical and plumbing. Around 10 a.m. on Tuesday morning, students were completing the base of the “itsy-bitsy tiny house.”

“What we are going to do is let them work for a couple hours,” Smith said. “Then what we are going to do is we are going to pull the plumber off and we are going to have a seperate skill set for each plumber of each team to go and do and they are going to have an hour to accomplish that. Then we are going to pull the mason off and have the mason go and do a skill set and they are going to have a project and they are going to have an hour to accomplish that.”

Keehr and Erik Jensen, building inspector for the city of Centralia, both served as judges for the competition.

“Right now the students are doing a rough framing,” said Keehr Tuesday morning. “Once they get through the rough framing, they are going to split into their individual parts, still working as a team, so that if one needs help the other one should come and help them. But they are working on getting walls up and finishing the floor up right now.”

The students will head to Louisville, Kentucky this June. Smith said he and the students will work to raise money for the trip. To donate, contact Mitchell Smith at msmith@centralia.wednet.edu.