With a set of blue prints, a pile of materials and nine hours, four county vo-tech students constructed a state championship win and a shot at a national title.

The students in Butler County Vocational-Technical School's building construction program came together as a team to win a gold medal at the annual SkillsUSA state championship competition in Hershey. They will compete in the national championship June 25 to 29 in Louisville, Ky.

Karns City High School seniors Sam Ellenberger and Dalton Fair and junior Tanner Schaffner, and Butler High School junior John Michaels combined their skills to defeat 10 other high school teams and two teams from post-secondary trade schools in the TeamWorks construction competition.

Braxton Hilderbrand, a Butler High School senior and carpentry student, also won a silver medal in the cabinet making contest.

Each team in the TeamWorks competition was handed a set of blue prints they had never seen before and were given nine hours over two days, April 18 and 19, to complete their projects.

“We didn't know until they slapped a blueprint down in front of us,” Sam said. “They gave us an hour to look it over and come up with a game plan.”

The blueprints turned out to be for a kitchen with an attached porch.

The teams were given 8 foot by 12 foot platforms to start with. On top of that they had to build 8-foot-by-8-foot kitchens and use the rest of the space for the porch.

“We had to build all the walls, all the electrical. We had to put everything together,” Sam said.

Union tradesmen served as judges. They checked the dimensions of the structure and judged the plumbing and electrical installations against the provided specifications, Tanner said.

There were a lot of students in a lot of different skills competitions.

Sixteen of the 18 Butler vo-tech students who qualified at the district competition made the trip to Hershey to compete for state championships, said Regina Hiler, principal and assistant director.

A total of 1,500 students competed in 93 skills contests — everything from robotics to barbering.

Sam, Dalton and Tanner attend the vo-tech at a different time than John, but they were put together as a team by their former instructor Frank Raypush, who resigned to accept another job around the time of the competition.

Students attend sessions lasting two hours a day during the week at the vo-tech, but the building construction team got permission to spend whole days as they prepared for the state contest, Hiler said.

John said the team is preparing for the national competition by practicing reading blue prints.

The team was ready for the state competition when Ron Sankey was hired as a long-term substitute instructor for the building construction program.

“All I did was review a few things before they left,” Sankey said. “You don't know what you're going to be building. You have to make sure you're well-rounded. They don't give you the blue prints until you get there.”

He said he reviewed framing, wiring, plumbing and masonry with the team before they departed for the competition.

A semester is devoted to each of those four subjects during the two-year program at the vo-tech, he said.

“It gives the students a wide range of skills,” Sankey said.

Those skills have to be sharp for the competition because the teams were not given extra material to use in case they measured or cut something incorrectly.

“No extra. Two pieces of pipe and six fittings and that is it,” Sankey said about the plumbing supplies. “To think on the fly like that is tough.”

He said he is proud of their achievement.

“I was pleasantly surprised because I knew they were going against full-time vo-tech students,” Sankey said.

Some school districts offer full-time vo-tech programs in which English, science, math and other regular education classes are taught to vo-tech students at vo-tech schools, he said.

“To knock off those guys was good,” Sankey said. “They even beat two post-secondary schools.”