Nineteen Carbon Career & Technical Institute students recently earned medals at the SkillsUSA State Competition in Hershey.

From April 9-11, 51 CCTI students competed, with eight winning gold, five capturing silver and six taking home bronze.They included gold medalists Jessica Braker, Alexa Everett, Bridgette Miller, Gary Higgins, Jocelyn Mansberry, Hunter Simmons, Preston Smith and Tyler Wentz.Silver medalists are Dustin Ahner, Jared David, Andrew Frable, Jacob Snyder and Thomas Smith. Winning bronze are Nathanual Hower, Tanner Johnson, Blake Kilraine, Kelsey Oncheck, Shane Sutch and Regan Turko.This is the highest number of students CCTI has ever sent to states, and it is the most medals attained by CCTI in the school's history.David Reinbold, administrative director of the school, was proud of the students for their strong performance."Due to the hard work and dedication of our students and staff and support from parents, OAC members and the Joint Operating Committee, CCTI has steadily built an exemplary Skills USA program," he said.During the 2004-05 school year, CCTI did not have an active Skills program. No students competed or won at any level.Since then, they have re-established the chapter and have consistently grown the number of competitors and medalists."The current advisers, Lisa Walck, Kevin Kuehner, and Jeremy Pease have done a tremendous job promoting and organizing SkillsUSA activities and events," Reinbold said. "We are proud of the fact that we now do so well at the state level against 80-plus schools with career and technical programs. Many of these schools have much larger student populations and greater resources than CCTI. "At this year's competition, CCTI was second overall to Bucks County Technical School in the number of events with a first-place finish (Bucks: eight; CCTI: four) and number of students awarded gold medals (Bucks: 14; Carbon: eight).CCTI was third overall for most events with medals (Bucks: 16; LCTI and York: 11; CCTI: 10). The student populations of the schools CCTI finished behind range from 1,400 to 2,400.CCTI currently has 374 students."Our advisers like to say we are 'small but mighty,'" Reinbold said.The gold medalists will now go on to compete at the 50th annual SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference on June 23-27 in Kansas City, Missouri.For more information on this organization, visit

www.skillsusa.org.