Four 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 and will move on to compete in the national championship June 25-29 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.

Butler High School senior and carpentry student Braxton Hilderbrand 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 a pile of materials, and were given nine hours over two days, April 18-19, to complete their projects.

The blueprints were for a kitchen with an attached porch.

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

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

Union tradesmen judged a total of 1,500 students competed in 93 skills contests at the state competition in Hershey, 16 were Butler vo-tech students.

A full story appears in the Butler Eagle.