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Joseph Coderre had less than 10 minutes left out of the 30-minute competition to terminate the end of a cable, install a jack, and screw a faceplate on a wall. Dressed in a white polo shirt, black pants, and safety glasses, he scaled a blue stepladder to bring two horizontal cables from a simulated work area outlet back to the patch panel. As a judge sat nearby with a stopwatch, Coderre worked steadily to finish the installation.
Coderre, a fifth-year student at Tulsa Technology Center in Tulsa, Okla., was one of 23 students who competed in the Telecommunications Cabling contest at the SkillsUSA Championships June 23-25 in Kansas City, Mo. Both post-secondary and secondary students competed at the state level before advancing to the 40th annual national competition. The 2004 event featured 77 skilled hands-on and leadership contests and involved more than 4,200 students and 1,500 judges. Richard Bowers, technician/instructor for Communications Apprenticeship and Training in Brooklyn Heights, Ohio, has served as a judge for the competition since it first started three years ago.
"It's been a dream of mine to have a competition like this in our industry," he says. "This is the best way to prepare the students for a career. There's no substitute for hands-on training."
To compete in the real world, the students need to learn more than just how to install cabling...