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Three Powell High School welding students brought home nearly $3,000 in scholarships and welding equipment, and also met U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) after their first welding competition Oct. …
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Three Powell High School welding students brought home nearly $3,000 in scholarships and welding equipment, and also met U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) after their first welding competition Oct. 20-21.
A total of 12 Powell High School students attended the Laramie County Community College and Puma Steel Welding Competition. This was Powell High School’s first year back at the competition since before the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year they simply couldn’t get a group of students together.
It was the first welding competition for juniors Carson Lawrence, Tyler Wood and Dalton Worstell, all of whom placed within the top 10. A total of 23 students across the state advanced to the second day. Lawrence said he did the math and out of 106 students he placed third overall. He took home $2,000 in scholarships for an in-state welding program and Wood and Worstell each took home $500.
“Well, when we first got there, we didn’t really have a lot of confidence going into it, because there was a lot of people participating in it,” Wood said. “But after the first day, we got the call to show that we made it to the next round and that was a big confidence booster for the next day.”
Lawrence said that they did not have a clear idea of what welds they would be asked to do. The first day of the competition included a vertical weave, which is a difficult weld that forces the welder to go “uphill.” The students practiced for the competition for roughly one week, but they did not put much emphasis on a vertical weave because they thought it would be a day two challenge.
Lawrence said they got the call that they had made it to the second day of the competition while they were in a Mongolian restaurant, “we just distracted the whole restaurant, it was so exciting.”
Worstell said that the scholarship will definitely “push me to go onto the next level.” Lawrence and Worstell joked that now that they have the scholarships they may as well.
“Being in the top 20, it was really exciting coming from a super small town,” Lawrence said. “So now, we want to go to every competition, want to learn every competition and we want to be at every competition, now we just want to chase it.”
