Though Westwood SkillsUSA had fewer members this year, they came out of districts strong with six bronze, 22 silver, and 26 gold medals. Districts was at the Texas State Technical College in Waco from Feb. 1 to Feb. 2. SkillsUSA offers a variety of competitions for their members to participate in.

“I like the fact that SkillsUSA has a very broad range of competitions from business to technology to medicine. In addition, I like the fact that we can feel free to compete in multiple competitions,” Advika Rajesh ‘21 said.

Not only does SkillsUSA have numerous contests, it also has many different members. Members, old and new, bonded at districts while waiting for their event to begin.

“I like the people in SkillsUSA because they are really nice and helpful. They are also really dedicated to their event and do a great job preparing for their event which is inspiring,” Manasi Chande ‘20 said.

Members competed all day Friday and Saturday morning as well. After their events, students waited for awards ceremony and reflected on how they did.

“Our competition was good. We competed in Health Knowledge Bowl and we had to answer a lot of questions related to health and new health care laws. We think we did well because we studied pretty hard for the event,” Chande said.

Through the experience of competing, preparing, and socializing at districts, SkillsUSA members discovered different types of events and learnt what to do in various career scenarios.

“I have learnt to be professional and prepared because each competition requires you to follow a set of standards and bring specific things. This makes you more organized and ready well-ahead,” Rajesh said.

Westwood SkillsUSA is led by president Margaret Seo ‘19 and sponsor Ms. Tish Saliani.

“I like SkillsUSA because I can be job ready on day one. I wanted to be president because in junior year I was the treasurer and could see potential solutions to better our organization and help our members.” Margaret Seo ‘19 said.

Many members proceeded to the next round of SkillsUSA which is state.  The officers, sponsors, and members are looking forward to competing again.

“I think we had a successful district competition and hopefully we can have an even better one for the state conference in April,” Seo said.

Members who advanced will travel to Corpus Christi in April for the next level of SkillsUSA competitions, state.