Web Design students take home first and second place in SkillsUSA competition.
Photo courtesy of Jerry Esparza
On April 16th, four students made TJ proud by winning first and second place in the Web Design portion of the SkillsUSA statewide competition. Theo Reger, Marelle Davey, Chelsea Skubal, and Nicole Blake all came home with honors, medals, and a feeling of pride.
SkillsUSA is a student run organization, much like DECA, that focuses on technical skills. There are a plethora of tech skills that fall under SkillsUSA’s classifications, but the ones offered here at TJ are multimedia, programming, web design, 3D animation, video, and photography. SkillsUSA is also a leadership organization devoted to training young adults to become the leaders of the future. One of their main goals, straight from the SkillsUSA handbook, is, “Building Champions for America’s work force.”
SkillsUSA runs an annual competition where the best students from each school district work on different challenges using technical skills they’ve learned in their classrooms. In the web design competition, students were told to create a website for the judge. They were given a prompt and a brief description of what the site needed, as well as data, a gallery of images, and other resources needed to complete their task. The students used programs such Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Flash to create the site and impress the judge.
Though the outcome ended in beaming smiles and medals, the competition itself was far less glamorous. “It was basically sitting in front of a computer screen for eight hours,” laughs Junior Marelle Davey. The contenders had to create a fictitious website for a concert tour by the name of Big Day Out. They had to make the site work well, look interesting, and appear authentic. “It was really overwhelming,” recounts Davey. “The group next to us were the ones who won first place last year, and placed 17th in Nationals, and it was difficult to adapt because they had all the newest equipment.” The new technology and advanced versions of Adobe made the competition much more intense for the participating groups. “It didn’t seem like we had all the skills we needed, but we just used what we learned, and the next thing we knew we had won,” said Davey.
The competition only had one judge, who is a graphic designer, and the students were not judged aesthetically, but on how well the followed the criteria given. “The judge didn’t focus on what was done or not, but how creative (the site) was and how well it fit web standards, CSS rules, and the standards of graphic design and navigation,” said Computer Magnet Teacher Jerry Esparza. “Many of the groups failed to grasp the real meaning behind web design; that the site was not only appealing, but user-friendly and followed design guidelines and content management requirements.” Esparza’s class was what ultimately brought the team to victory, as they had all of the components the other teams seemed to lack. “I taught them there are three parts to a website: content, structure, and design. When all those three are balanced, the website looks good. If the website isn’t aligned, it looks sloppy; if it doesn’t have design, it’s boring; and if it doesn’t have structure, it won’t work.
“(When we won) it came as a real shock,” smiles Davey. “Neither of us really saw it coming.” Davey and Reger are not the only ones excited at their victory, however. “I’m really proud of them,” says Esparza. “They worked really hard, and even though they battled time, they still came out on top.”
This dynamic winning duo was paired under some unusual circumstances. “I was never in the advanced web design class,” said Davey. “Nicole Blake just knew I liked web design, and asked if I wanted to go along for the competition. I just said, ‘Okay, sure.’ I didn’t really think about it, I just thought it would be cool to go up to Red Rocks for three days. I was paired with someone else, and on the day of the competition Theo’s partner and my partner were absent, so we got thrown together at the last minute. The day of the competition was the first time I ever worked with him, so it was even more surprising that we won!”
Nervous though Davey was, nothing seemed to faze senior Theo Reger. “I wasn’t really worried, even though it was the first time I’ve worked with Marelle. I mean, Esparza prepared us well, and the whole competition was really fun.”
The two winners now have the chance to travel to Kansas City in June to compete at the National Conference. “I’m definitely nervous about that, because it’s the best teams from forty-nine other states, but I’m also really excited. It will take a lot more preparation though,” Davey said. Regardless of the outcome of Nationals, these Spartans have a lot to be proud of.
