Sikeston VICA students put their mark on state convention's shirt, pin

Monday, February 10, 2003
Kasi Hux shows her winning T-shirt design developed as an assignment at the Sikeston Career and Technology Center's TV production class (Photo by Scott Welton, Staff)

SIKESTON - The Missouri SkillsUSA-VICA Conference this April will have a bit of Sikeston all over it: both the T-shirt and pin for this year were designed right here.

Kasi Hux, a senior at Richland High School, is this year's VICA T-shirt design contest winner and Trey Baird, a senior at Bloomfield High School, submitted the winning pin design.

From two of the nine "sending schools," Hux and Baird are second year TV production students at the Sikeston Career and Technology Center.

Designing and submitting a VICA T-shirt design was required for everyone in the TV production class, according to its instructor, Steve Beydler. "Everybody had to do a T-shirt," he said. "It was a class project." Students were also required to design a pin, but did not have to submit their design to the contest.

For Sikeston VICA Club members to win not only one but both of the design contests is remarkable, according to the club's advisors, Michael Harris and Christine Ray. The Missouri design contests, open to members of all the state's VICA clubs, drew 71 T-shirt design entries and 29 pin design entries.

T-shirt design

The T-shirts use what looks like a product bar-code with Missouri's shape incorporated. "I just want to go and see all my shirts," said Hux of the upcoming convention.

The pin "has a Jerry Garcia tie-die" look to it, Beydler said. At the national convention, some participants try get a pin from each of the 50 states, "It is a hot commodity, so to speak," said Ray.

Originally formed as VICA, which stand for Vocational Industrial Clubs of America, the name SkillsUSA-VICA was adopted to reflect "more of an emphasis on the student learning job skills," said Ray. "They're learning entry-level job skills."

SkillsUSA-VICA is a national organization serving high school and college students and instructors who are enrolled in training programs in technical, skilled and service occupations including health occupations.

The 240,000 student members are organized into more than 13,000 chapters and 53 state and territorial associations including Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands.

Pin design

At the annual national-level Skills USA Championships, approximately 4,000 students compete in 71 occupational and leadership skills areas.

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