South Surrey students took home 14 medals from the annual Lower Fraser Valley Regional Skills competition – four gold, four silver and six bronze.
The hardware was among 27 medals won across the Surrey School District at the event, held earlier this month at the Cloverdale campus of Kwantlen Polytechnic University.
Honours to local students recognized prowess in computer design, computer animation, cooking, welding and robot-building skills.
Earl Marriott student Bryce Balaniuk won gold in the junior sumo robot competition, where players built tiny remote-controlled robots.
Elgin Park student Cullen McCann took gold in the Architecture CAD (Computer Aided Design) category, where competitors had 3½ hours to produce a drawing that meets international drafting standards.
Another Elgin student, Laurel Pucker, won bronze in the same category; Clayton Heights’ Ryan Allen took bronze in the mechanical CAD competition.
EMS’ Mackenzie Charles and Tamanawis students Nathan Chan and Josh Morgan all won in the culinary category, which gave the young cooks three hours to prepare a two-course meal using standardized recipes and provided ingredients.
Charles won gold, Chan won silver and Morgan won bronze.
Two Clayton Heights students, Robert Easton and Kaitlyn Rittenhouse, teamed up to win silver in the 3-D animation competition, where teams spent worked for seven hours – the morning was devoted to creating animated characters without computers and the afternoon, to bringing them to life with software. Another Clayton Heights 3-D team, Alexa Tarrayo and Andy Bui, won bronze.
The competition’s welding category was also won by a Clayton Heights student, Tyler Hireen.
Earl Marriott welders Reid Gibbons and Lane Holthe took silver and bronze.
Gold medalists advance to the provincial competition, set for April 18 at the Tradex in Abbotsford.