OTC students make most at SkillsUSA nationals

Dylan Durrington can’t wait for next year’s SkilsUSA competition when the OTC student wants a chance to defend the gold medal he received a few weeks ago at the national competition.

“I cannot wait to compete again next year. It’s one of those things that I will be doing again,” he said.

Durrington and 11 other OTC students took home either a gold, silver or bronze medal in the competition held recently in Kansas City, where more than 6,000 students from across the country competed in various areas of career and technical education in 94 different trade, technical and leadership fields.

The OTC team of Durrington, Tess Bankston, Mathew Shuey and Alex Wirges won gold medal honors in the Broadcast News competition.

In that competition, students had to pick from 27 different news stories to create a three-minute broadcast in a two-hour time period. They also had to produce scripts and arundown sheet of what stories would be used.

Durrington credits his OTC instructors for the team’s success.

“They taught me all the basic necessities needed in a studio environment and how to write a tech sheet, how to behave on and off camera, how to format news and how to be a friendly and conversational news anchor,” he said.

Bankston, who attended Willard High School and will be transferring to Missouri State University in the fall, said she didn’t get nervous until she saw the competition.

“When you realize you’re competing against 20 or more other teams, you realize that there are other people who are good at what they do. All you can do is focus on your team,” she said.

 “It was a great competition,” said Dana Gambriel, an instructor in the OTC Electronic Media Production program. “We had some amazing teams and the kids stepped up big time.”

OTC’s Video Product Development team of Kyle Hammett and Jacob McKnight also won gold medals along with Ryan Williams in Computer Programming.

Other OTC medal winners include:

• Stacy Walter, Action Skills, silver medal

• Jamie Danzer, Pamela Spickard and Monique Russell, Career Pathways – Human Services, silver medal

• Ashley Kelley, Preschool Teaching Assistant, bronze medal

Steve Koehler is coordinator of media relations at Ozarks Technical Community College