Mission tech team medals at state

ST. IGNATIUS — A team of only four students brought home the hardware to St. Ignatius two weeks back, winning medaling trophies from six different contests at the state Technology Students Association competition April 27-28 in Livingston.

The St. Ignatius TSA squad, made up of sophomores and juniors, performed proficiently — medaling in two-thirds of the events they competed in out of a field of 12 schools and 150 students.

Matt Young, the high school’s industrial arts teacher who has been the team’s advisor for six years now, said he was pleased to see his small group bring home so many trophies.

“I was really proud of the way they performed,” Young said. “These kids worked their tails off to do this.”

TSA is a competition trade club or group, similar to Skills USA, who meet once a week through the school year to learn and train for the annual state competition. St. Ignatius is the only western Montana high school other than St. Regis to compete this year.

TSA team newcomers Ethan Dillard and Jordanian foreign exchange student Mohammad Al-Amer were led by second-year veterans Spencer Ahlborn and Christopher McCollum through nine state competitions including: Flight structure; magnetic levitation vehicle; pop-bottle rocketry; paper rocketry; technology quiz bowl; internet scavenger hunt; logo design; digital display; and the grab bag.

Dillard and Ahlborn’s Mag Lev vehicle took first place honors as well as did Dillard and McCollum’s paper rocket. All four teammates earned a second place trophy for the tech quiz bowl contest and Al-Amer also took second in pop-bottle rocketry. Al-Amer also teamed with McCollum to take third place in the online scavenger hunt while taking solo third place honors in the grab bag contest.

The local TSA members also built projects that were raffled off at a charity fundraiser event for the St. Ignatius Volunteer Fire Department, and have constructed a cedar glider chair to be raffled off as a fundraiser to the club in the month of May.