Monarchs is home to many different clubs, whether it be a foreign language club or a business club such as DECA. Most of these clubs are known to the school’s students, however, there are a few clubs that are not as well known. Skills USA is one of these clubs.

Every Thursday Skiils USA meets in Mr. Kneifl’s room, the club sponser. Skills USA is a leadership program which helps students prepare to be great future employees.

“It [Skills USA] gives the people involved in it the abilities to be great employees for employers, gives them desirable traits for employers,” Skills USA officer Liam Wachter said. ”Here we offer trades, just a deeper look into the trades we have here we explore woodworking, welding whatever we have access to we like to explore that.”

Recently, Skills USA learned that they are going to state sometime during the month of April. So far only two members have been confirmed to go to state, one being Braden Covington and the other is Liam Wachter.

“State offers a lot of different competitions like cosmetology, woodworking, cabinetry, welding,” Wachter said. “You can enter into any competition you want and then you compete. For some things you show up and it’s an all day thing like cabinet making.”

Since state is in three months, preparing for state hasn’t kicked into full gear yet. Wachter is going to states for prepared speech and mousetrap car. For the speech he will have to perform in front of judges and then be judged off of  a specific criteria.

“I’ve just been trying to narrow down my topics for the prepared speech, and drawing ideas for like the different mousetrap cars and co2 cars I can make,” Wachter said.

Preparing for state, for any activity, can be tough. It can also be discouraging when you hear all about how a certain club or sport is going to states, and there is little to no recognition about your club going to state. Over the announcements I don’t believe I’ve ever heard anything about Skills USA, if the school were to send out more announcements and offer better information about events related to the club in order to help boost the club’s visibility.