It was certainly a different format than it’s been in the past, but several students from the Estevan Comprehensive School earned medals at the recent high school Skills Canada provincials, which were held virtually this year.
“This was a whole different ball game,” said Joyce Mack, who is the instructor for the hairstyling program and has been preparing students for Skills Canada for many years. “The provincial level was way different.”
In hairstyling, Shay Frederick won a gold medal, continuing a tradition of success for ECS students in that trade. ECS has won numerous gold medals in hairstyling in the past 25 years.
She will compete in the national Skills Canada virtual competition on May 26.
ECS has sent more than one competitor in hairstyling in the past, and has swept the podium in previous years. But Mack opted to send just the one competitor this year, because it was difficult to train for provincials.
“The student that went in, we did most of her training in the fall of 2019 … getting ready for the 2020 year, which nobody got to compete in because everybody was sent home in March,” said Mack.
When Skills Canada Saskatchewan said they would do a virtual competition this year, ECS was approached to see if they would have someone, and Frederick was selected.
Frederick did the competition in the school’s hairstyling lab, and she had to send all of her pictures in.
“All of the submitting of photos and all the requirements online, she looked after getting all of that posted,” said Mack.
Also, Waneeke Baptiste won gold in two-dimensional character computer animation. She will compete in a national Skills Canada virtual event on May 28.
“She’s self-taught … and she’ll go from being an individual (at provincials) into a team this time,” said Mack. “Her brother Koivu is going to be her team partner for this level.”
Mack noted that the students who compete at nationals will have to submit photos, videos and visual assessment to the national technical people for marking this round.
The national competition will be spread out, instead of happening over the course of two days. There are a couple of days between hairstyling and computer animation, for example.
Nationals will also be run on Eastern Standard Time. Frederick, for example, will be at the school at 5 a.m. to get ready for a competition that will start at 6 a.m. local time.
Mack’s not sure if the number of entries was down this year, but she expects they would have been. They were definitely down for ECS, which had four students competing, rather than the dozens they usually send to provincials.
For nationals, the school will also need to have a proctor who is independent from the competition area.
“We’re really lucky that we have staff here that have been on Skills Canada national boards before, because they’re actually going to have to listen to proctor meetings with other members from every province from across Canada in order to get ready to take pictures and run their competition as long as they’re doing nationals from within the school,” said Mack.
All of the students from ECS and other schools had to face similar challenges to participate this year.
“They were going back to what they have learned from being in school, and then polished up on a lot of their own personal time, in order to challenge provincials, because that’s basically what those individuals were doing when challenging this competition, basically on their own.”
The school and the school division were very supportive of the students, as they encouraged the students to move forward into the next level.
Also competing at Skills Canada provincials were Graeson Nelson and Kurt Balbeuna. They won a bronze medal in video production.
