Lakeland High School is fortunate to have a shop class where the focus is on welding. 

Welding is when metal is melted by an extremely hot flame and used to conjoin two or more pieces of metal together. 

The Lakeland shop class took a trip to NIC for competition with other welding groups in the area on Feb. 11.

Lakeland did exceptionally well in the competition. 

The competition was split up into three categories: vertical flex core (FCAW), ark (SMAW) and cutting. 

The overall winner of the competition was Clay Lawrie, a senior at LHS. 

Clay won first place in SMAW and second place in cutting. Trey South won first place in FCAW. 

Lakeland students took five out of the top 9; none of the places were below second place. 

Lakeland students are very happy with how they did and the competition results. 

Koehn Tunnell, a sophomore student who went on the trip, was very proud of how Lakeland did. 

“It went really well. One of our kids did really good, Clay Lawrie, he got first overall, and he did really well in the competition.”

Tunnell loves having shop as an option at Lakeland and thinks it is a great class to be in. 

“I love this class because I can hang out with my friends. I also love that we can do hands-on work, especially since it is welding because welding is a great life skill to have. It is a super fun class to take too.”

Another student who attended as well was Brent Hill. 

 “The competition was really fun. When we got there, we were told to pick up a packet and then go to the three stations. You got a certain amount of minutes, and then you would switch to a new station and move on to the next part of the competition.” Hill said. “It went really, really well. I was really proud of how well Lakeland did.” 

The shop teacher, Mr. Corey Pettit, was very impressed with how his students did. 

“We did awesome. We took 5 of the top 9 places in the competition. It is a lot of fun, and students learn a lot through doing the competitions. Their skill level jumps up quite a bit through preparing and competing in the competitions.”

Shop is a class that can teach good welding skills for students at the high school level. 

Pettit thinks that any student should take advantage of this opportunity and join his class. 

“We teach real-world skills that students can take into the workforce and make good money while doing it. We do a dang good job at it as well.”