OTC students win six medals at national SkillsUSA competition

Ozarks Technical Community College students earned six medals in the national SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference held in Kansas City, which ended Wednesday.

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.

In all, OTC teams won three gold medals, two silver and one bronze.

Students work against the clock and each other, proving their expertise in occupations like electronics, computer-aided drafting, precision machining, medical assisting and culinary arts.

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

Gambriel was the advisor for two groups that won gold medals — Broadcast News Production Team A made up of Tess Bankston, Dylan Durrington, Mathew Shuey and Alex Wirges, and Video Product Development Team B made up of Kyle Hammett and Jacob McKnight.

OTC’s third gold medal went to 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