HARLINGEN — Sunshine Mendoza gripped her welding project with a set of clamps, placing the hot T-shaped project in a vat of water where it hissed, bubbled, steamed — and then cooled.
It was ready, and the Los Fresnos High School junior now submitted it to judges Friday in the Southern Careers Institute Harlingen campus’ 2022 South Texas High School Welding Competition.
High school students from throughout the Valley — Lasara, San Benito, Lyford, etc. — gathered at the campus at 1122 Morgan Blvd. to demonstrate their skill. The shop buzzed with the excitement of the day’s events, which began at 9 a.m. Students in thick welding jackets and helmets crowded into booths to work on team projects involving a metal cube, individual projects using a “fillet weld.” Flashes of light flickered from booths amid the roar of a machine extracting fumes from the contestants.
“I’m really enjoying how you get to work in a team, and you learn team work,” said Sunshine, 17.
She appreciated also how instructors were managing the contest.
“They’re taking it very serious about us and letting us do our own thing and they’re not just on top of us,” she said. “We get a lot of flexibility in what we are doing.”
Instructors emphasized the importance of the competition. Jorge Guerra, welding teacher from San Benito High School, had brought 12 students to the event.
“To me it’s very important, because that way we do know exactly where they stand,” Guerra said.
The students had just participated in a contest Thursday at Texas Southmost College in Brownsville where they’d placed first and second in team. They did as well Friday when they took first place overall.
Friday as students worked on their projects, Angel Quintanilla, a San Benito High School junior, expressed excitement over the day’s events.
“I’m working with the lat weld and the vertical weld,” said Angel, 16. “The competition is very important because we are learning new stuff.”
Lasara High School also brought several welding students to the event, one of them Juan Gonzales, 18. He like his fellow contestants revealed an intimate knowledge of the trade they were practicing.
“Today we did a fillet weld for competition,” said Juan, a senior. “Basically, you make a T and then you weld right there in the groove.”
He looked now at the weld he’d just completed.
“I did pretty good,” he said with satisfaction.
