High schoolers construct, compete and get career-ready

Published 1:30 am Thursday, February 12, 2026

MARYSVILLE — High school students showed off their woodworking, electrical, plumbing and bricklaying skills at the regional Teamworks Competition on Tuesday in Marysville.

Eight teams of four showed off what they learned in their career and technical education classes during the school year at E & E Lumber on State Avenue in Marysville.

These classes offer a variety of hands-on learning opportunities throughout the state — including construction, American Sign Language, medical assisting and others — for middle and high school students.

The competition was hosted by SkillsUSA and included students from the Sno-Isle Tech Skills Center in Mukilteo, the Regional Apprenticeship Pathways Program in Marysville, and the Sedro-Woolley High School Career and Technical Academy.

There are five regional competitions, Regional Apprenticeship Pathways teacher Logan McKay said in an interview at the event. A winner from each will compete in the state competition in April, from which the winner will move on to the national competition in June.

“My favorite part is seeing all the teamwork come together,” McKay said. “The team has discussed who’s doing what and how they can work together to accomplish those tasks.”

The teams were graded on the squareness of the four walls they built and the window and door they installed. The electrical circuits needed to meet National Electrical Code. The masonry was graded on cleanliness, spacing and use of tools. Finally, the pipes needed to be cleaned, prepared, properly soldered and graded through a real-world operations test.

The teams received a plan before the competition that they needed to follow.

“This I’ve done many times before,” said Gage Wolfe, an Arlington High School senior, as he worked on wiring two outlets, a light switch and a junction box for testing purposes. “I enjoy the hands-on part of it. I’ve never been successful just sitting down and being told to do things.”

His focus right now is graduating from high school, Wolfe said, but he wants to get an electrical apprenticeship.

“This program is my whole entire plan because you can take this program and get an interview with a union,” he said.

On Wolfe’s team, Logan Gardner — a senior from Marysville Pilchuck High School — was taking care of the carpentry and framing. He has been working with a general contractor since he turned 16, he said in an interview.

“Just being in this program has gotten me more jobs than I could count,” Gardner said. “Every skill I’ve learned is from here.”

After graduation, he hopes to enroll in Snohomish County Public Utility District’s Apprenticeship Program, become a lineman and help keep our cities powered by working on power lines, Gardner said.

The work gives him the same feeling he had as a kid “playing sports, being outside, getting dirty and just having fun,” he said. “You get to be out here with your buddies.”

When the project is done, seeing the final product “feels amazing,” Gardner said. “Especially with framing, in a day, you could hold up a whole building.”

For all the participating students, it’s the culmination of everything they’ve learned since starting school in September, McKay said.

“The pressure of this event and the competition of it, winners or losers, it’s the experience and the value of having the pressure, making the mistakes, figuring out how to fix it and move on,” he said. “At the end of the day, these kids are all going to be able to stand by their structures that they build and be proud of them.”

For some of the students, the first time they held a circular saw was in their first technical education class, McKay said.

“Then they take the opportunity to come here and test their skills, that just says wonders about — speaks volumes about who they are and what they can accomplish in their life,” he said.

Wolfe and Gardner’s team won the competition, along with Vernon Christianson and Steven Morales-Cruz, both also seniors from Marysville Pilchuk High School. They move on to the state championship on April 17.

Taylor Scott Richmond: 425-339-3046; taylor.richmond@heraldnet.com; X: @BTayOkay