Jace Perry, a 2024 graduate of Star Valley High School, was honored at the National SkillsUSA Championships, held at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia June 26-27, with a Skill Point Certificate in Carpentry. Perry earned his award by constructing a required building according to blueprints and demonstrating a predetermined set of skills with his work.
“There were a lot of new things [required] that I hadn’t learned yet,” explained Perry. “I didn’t do the greatest, but I did my best and I did all right. They gave me a pair of blueprints, and I had a day to build a shed. It was a matter of being able to read the blueprints and know this stuff.”
According to a press release issued by SkillsUSA, “more than 6,000 students competed at the national showcase of career and technical education. The SkillsUSA Championships is the largest skill competition in the world and covers 1.79 million square feet, equivalent to 31 football fields or 41 acres.”
Perry was honored with his Skill Point Certificate because he “met a predetermined threshold contest score” for the national SkillsUSA event, “demonstrating workplace readiness.”
For the competition, Perry was given his blueprints and all the materials needed to construct his building, which he described as a type of shed with a porch-like overhang. He was expected to provide all his own tools, and he admits that his most valuable tool was his measuring tape.
A requirement in the blueprints to build a wall of metal studs meant drawing on his common sense and digging deep through the learning curve of working with materials and techniques he was unfamiliar with.
“It was easier than I thought it was going to be,” Perry admitted. “It was just thin metal used for non-bearing walls like for drywall backing, basically to keep your dry well safe. They had self-tapping screws that drilled through the metal. It just got all screwed together with some screws.” Perry enjoyed connecting with students from all over the nation who had similar goals, skills and ambition. “I met a lot of new people and learned a lot of new skills and had a great time, overall. My favorite part was meeting people from all over the country.”
To be honored with his Skill Point Certificate is “Pretty cool,” he said. “This opens so many doors with the number of commercial com- panies that were at Nationals. They’re recruiting and it opens a lot of doors as far as jobs go.”
