Wicked Welding Competition
On Saturday, October 20th, OJSH Fabrication teacher Mr. Van Camp took four senior high students to the third annual Wicked Welding event at the CLAC Welding Training Centre in Edmonton. Wicked Welding, as the name suggests, is a Halloween-themed welding competition at the CLAC welding training facility. The competition is a joint partnership between CLAC, the CWA Foundation, and high schools. Teams from nine Edmonton and area high schools participated in this year’s welding event. The OJSH team was composed of Grade 11 students Zakk Goertzen, Brennan Borle, Gavin Sandsbraaten, and Koryn Kormos.
This was OJSH’s first time attending the welding competition. Each four-member school team had only 6 hours to create a metallic, Halloween-themed sculpture to compete for the top prize. Mr. Van Camp said: “Our students worked incredibly hard the entire day to produce a very vivid sculpture”. The students and their teacher were very proud of their work, especially considering the students that were on the team are first-year fabricators and they only started learning to weld a week before the competition.
Mr. Van Camp said the competition was very well organized, and every participating student came away from the competition with some amazing gifts and souvenirs: each student received gloves and a welding cap and some students even came away with a high quality welding helmet and jacket. CLAC also donated several pallets of welding consumables to any school that wanted it. All materials used in the event were donated by local Edmonton and area businesses.
Global TV was in attendance at the event and their reporter got a quote from Zakk: “It teaches you a new skill, and it’s a really good skill to have in life because you never know when you’re going to need it, and there are a lot of things you’re going to need it for.”
The team’s creation is being put on display in the school’s main foyer once the sculpture has been cleaned up.