KPU students win gold at Skills Canada BC Competition, take bronze at nationals

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After taking gold at the 2024 Skills Canada British Columbia Provincial Competition, four Kwantlen Polytechnic University students went on to win bronze at the national competition in Quebec on May 31.  

Held annually, the Skills Canada competitions award the talent and skills of high-school and college students in trades and technology. 

This year, KPU horticulture students David Craig and Kyle Kant competed in the landscape category, while Jorge Lorenzana Lopez and Nguyen Cao An (Ryan) Do competed in the mechatronics category for the second year in a row. 

“It was stressful but we’re happy ….The stress relief is unbelievable, I had goosebumps after just how good it felt,” Craig says.

The stress of the competition comes from the size of the project required under the time limit. 

Pairs had to bring their own tools and build a project based on a set of instructions given by event organizers over two days at nationals, and one day at provincials. 

At nationals, the landscaping team was tasked to construct a curved wooden bridge connecting two landings with steps down to a faux riverbed, adding the required greenery. 

On the mechatronics side, their team was asked to build a robotic double conveyor with a gripper to grab the pieces of material and move it forward to the identification area. Depending on the colour or make-up of the piece, it would go back to the gripper to be moved to its appropriate spot. 

“It felt great because it was something that we really wanted to achieve, to have the opportunity to go to the nationals again, … it was really an amazing experience to be bagging the podium,” says Lopez, who competed at nationals with his teammate for the second time. 

Craig, Kant, and Lopez all say they were encouraged to enter in the competition with the encouragement of their respective instructors, who saw the potential in their skills. 

“Our professor [said] ‘You two are really good, we want you to compete,’ and we kind of hummed and hawed about it, … then he convinced us and it turned out to be an awesome experience,” Kant says. 

Both teams representing B.C. say they worked extremely well together, and the teamwork from winning gold helped them take the bronze at the national competition, which is a sentiment Craig and Kant’s coach, Russ Lyons, shares.

“These guys were amazing. The fact that it worked so well together [since] their background … is not huge on the construction side of things, what they pulled off is amazing,” Lyons says. 

Following the competition, both landscaping team members have an interest in making this a career. Kant, who had previous experience in the trade, also plans to start his own landscaping company in the future. 

For Lopez, he is grateful to have had the opportunity to compete again and plans to continue his education in mechatronics. 

“They paid for our site, the hotel [and] our meals ….  I [would] not be able to pay all that. So I would like to say thank you [to] KPU, my instructor, my friend Ryan, [and] all the people that supported us.”