CANFIELD, Ohio – Shelby Slate dotted eye shadow along Olivia Davies’ browbone, applying a darker shade to the eye lid.
The Mahoning County Career & Technical Center senior from Austintown Fitch High School competed Friday in the Ohio Northeast Regionals SkillsUSA Competition at the school. She was one of about 700 students from 25 northeastern and north central Ohio schools competing.
She placed fourth in the contest, earning a state competition berth.
“Basically, it’s just daytime and nighttime makeup, facials and esthetics,” the cosmetology student said.
Facials are her favorite task. To compete in the SkillsUSA competition, students must demonstrate their talent and skills in their programs. Shelby’s mother works in massage therapy and encouraged her to pursue cosmetology. Shelby likes that the industry will enable her to be self employed.
“I want to own my own business,” she said.
Olivia, a senior from Boardman High School, served as Shelby’s model for the competition, but she’s in the cosmetology program at MCCTC too.
“I was going to compete, but I felt like I wanted to allow her to because she was a model last year,” Olivia said. “And, honestly, it’s been a good experience.”
Since she was a child, Olivia has enjoyed helping people feel better about themselves, and that drew her to cosmetology.
“My neighbor would ask me to do her makeup and stuff, and I just honestly fell in love with it,” she said.
Olivia is working at Great Clips and training for advanced hair techniques.
“We take our state boards in about three months so, hopefully, I’ll get right in and be able to start working,” she said.
Besides esthetics, cosmetology students demonstrated skills with nail care and hair cutting and styling.
Lisa Schiraldi-Argiro, MCCTC SkillsUSA adviser and cosmetology instructor, said Friday’s event is the biggest regional SkillsUSA competition in Ohio.
“SkillsUSA is a career-tech student organization,” she said. “It’s one of the biggest CTSOs in the nation. It’s just an organization that supports our students in the trades that they’re learning here.”
The competition is one of the things the organization offers.
“Our students are able to compete in the field that they have been training in with us,” Schiraldi-Argiro said.
Besides cosmetology, students competed in collision repair, crime scene investigation, IT services, welding, criminal justice, CNC milling and technician, medical terminology, photography and other fields. Some competitions occurred offsite as part of the contest. IBEW Local 64 hosted the electricity competition, and the TeamWorks competition was at the Canfield Fairgrounds.
The top four students in each category will advance to the state competition set for March in Columbus. The winner in each category at the state level advances to the national contest in Atlanta. About 40 MCCTC students competed in the contest, which also brought in career and technical center students from Columbiana and Trumbull counties.
SkillsUSA allows students to meet those from other schools and understand more about their fields, Schiraldi-Argiro said.
“It gives them the perspective that there’s a whole world out there and there’s a lot of people out there that have made the same choices that they have currently made,” she said.
At a carpentry competition last week, union members were calling their bosses, urging them to come to the event to check out a particular student for a job.
“All these competitions have judges, and all of the judges are from the industry around us and they’re looking for employees,” the adviser said.
Joe Sander, MCCTC’s auto collision instructor, directed students in the painting and refinishing and collision repair contests.
“In the collision repair, the kids are repairing dents and welding,” Sander said. “In painting and refinishing, they’re masking and painting a panel.”
Each competitor will also complete a job interview, he added. Judges use a rubric to score students.
“In welding, for instance, they’re looking for: Did they clean the metal? Did they prep the metal properly?” Sander said. “Do they have good penetration? Did they set up the welder correctly? So there’s a lot of variables involved with all of the different contests.”
Judges for the painting and refinishing and collision repair contests are business owners, parts store employees and technicians in the field.
Many of them came to Sander wanting to be involved.
“Our field is shrinking as far as technicians, and we need more technicians out in the field,” the instructor said. “So the people volunteer to come and judge the kids so they can see what we have and are willing to take these kids in and work with them out in the field.”
Preparing for a competition of SkillsUSA’s scale is an all- hands-on-deck endeavor.
“Our staff, administration and teachers have been working, actually for probably three months and really working this week,” MCCTC Superintendent John Zehentbauer said.
That involves each teacher setting up a lab and getting ready for the events.
“I love it,” the superintendent said. “I was a SkillsUSA adviser back in the day – I won’t tell you how many years ago – and we had the contest here. We are very active in youth clubs here, so it’s important for us to host it.”
The contest rotates among career and technical centers, and this marks MCCTC’s last year of its two-year hosting stint. It may be several years before the competition returns to the Canfield campus.
“Competition is great,” Zehentbauer said. “It forces students to compete and prepare. It takes a lot. It’s not only in the contest itself, but they have to dress accordingly. They have to do all the safety things that are required for each contest and, obviously, the most important thing, the skills.”
Judges come from business and industry, and students competing are among the best of the best, he said.
“So you get exposure to those companies and, believe it or not, those companies pay a lot of attention to our bright kids from throughout the region,” Zehentbauer said, adding that it leads to employment.
Pictured at top: MCCTC cosmetology student Shelby Slate gives fellow student Olivia Davies a facial.