Welding Students Win Competition and Scholarships!
By Copes, Lance
February 28, 2011
On Saturday February 26th, 2011, the Grundy Area Vocational Center had three senior welding students travel to Tulsa, Oklahoma to compete in the Tulsa Welding School National Seniors Welding Competition. Among the 246 contestants from 22 states were three seniors from the Grundy Area Vocational Center: Bo Meier from Coal City High School, Eric Boudreau from Gardner South Wilmington High School, and Christian Cogdal from Minooka Community High School.
Each contestant was given the same project, which all parts were distributed in a 6” x 6” box, to complete within a one hour time frame. The competition was broken into three separate groups of 82 contestants. At the end of the day, all contestants were awarded a $500.00 scholarship for the Tulsa Welding School prior to the presentation of awards. Finishing first and receiving a full $15,000.00 scholarship to the Tulsa Welding School was Bo Meier from Coal City. Finishing second and receiving a $7,500.00 scholarship to the school was Eric Boudreau from Gardner South Wilmington High School. Finishing fourth and receiving a $3,750.00 scholarship to the school was Christian Cogdal from Minooka Community High School. These young men took it upon themselves to travel to Tulsa to enter this weekend’s competition. Bo will now take his place in a long line of champion welders over the past five years that include five consecutive State Champions, one National runner up, and two International Construction Industry Welders.
According to Mr. Copes, Director of the Grundy Area Vocational Center, “Mr. Cebulski , who is also an Apprentice Instructor for Local 422, has been with us almost six years now. He continues to provide these students with an excellent education that allows them the opportunity to work at the high end of industry standards at an early age. It is very impressive to see a majority of these students return after school hours and put 2 to 8 more hours of training in for the day. Not only do they spend time working in the shop, they also spend a portion of the time in the classroom covering text and completing the academic portion of the training. Mr. Cebulski runs our program much like a successful athletic program; there are practices, and then at the competitions during breaks, the students huddle around Mr. Cebulski and go over the game plan for the remaining work to be completed in the competition.” GAVC and its feeding school districts are very proud of the work ethic and success that Bo, Eric, and Christian displayed this past weekend, and we look forward to the upcoming Skills USA state competition being held in Springfield, Illinois on April 14th through the 16th.
