Students in Micheal Bowden’s welding class won first place in the SPARK competition and won the title Guardians of the Gas Tank. Shane Searles, Caleb Bilger, Jayden Manchango, Jack Fogarty and Kegan Franks constructed a cabinet to store welding gas tanks.
Junior Caleb Bilger said, “Basically, it’s a competition where we headed to Millbrook High School and he had to put together a cabinet.”
The cabinet had two sections to hold empty and full gas tanks. Gas tanks don’t need to be in a cabinet but this contest helps create safety. The cabinet they made was about six feet eight inches tall and three feet wide. The contest was judged by speed and accuracy.
Senior Jayden Manchango said, “We joked around saying, ‘We’re gonna be first, we’re gonna get first place.’ And then we’re looking at our welds, and we thought, we’re probably going to get fourth. We looked at the other people and two of them didn’t even build. Then Millbrook had everything fully put up. All the sheet metal was up. We didn’t have sheet metal up on ours, but their welds were just tacked in. They weren’t actually welded in, and then we realized, oh wait, we might actually win this thing.”
There were four other teams at the event. Last year, FVHS won second place for the competition. Students in the welding class are very happy to see they have grown.
“First place got a 160 DeWalt grinder, hoodies, jackets, hats, notepads and pen… The grinder definitely is my favorite,” said Bilger.
Every one on the team got a grinder. It was likely over $1000 worth of prizes. Manchango has worn his hat and hoodie that he got in the competition around the school. It was his favorite thing he got from the competition.
“When Bowden mentioned [the competitions], I was like, dude, I gotta get in there. There were other people interested in the class. I think some gave up halfway through because we were practicing for like a week. There was this guy named Nick that came into our class. He had been welding for his older brother; he got into it as a young age. He taught us,” said Bilger.
This all made the students very excited about learning to weld. Hopefully, it brings more students into learning blue collar jobs.
