Colby student prepares for culinary competition
SkillsUSA back after 2 year absence
Its been two years since SkillsUSA competitions have been allowed to take place, not since the coronavirus pandemic appeared on the horizon in March of 2020. But after a two year hiatus stemming from COVID-19, the 49th annual SkillsUSA Wisconsin State Leadership and Skills Conference is a go for 2022.
The majority of the competitions will take place at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison on Wednesday, April 6, but for a select group, their SkillsUSA competition will happen this week, on Friday, March 11, as students from the Spooner, Webster and Colby school districts do battle in a test of culinary skills and precision at Northcentral Technical College (NTC) in Wausau.
Representing Colby in the culinary arts competition will be eighth grader Brezlyn Boyer. While Boyer is young, she nonetheless brings several years of experience with her, having started cooking from an early age, joking that she just got tired of eating Ramen noodles.
“I’ve probably been cooking since fourth grade, just at home, cooking supper,” Boyer states. “I liked baking stuff, and then after I started baking treats and stuff, I got more into making meals.”
As much as Boyer enjoyed cooking for herself and her friends and family, it wasn’t until she took classes with Kevin Koehler, the Colby school district’s tech ed teacher, that she learned about SkillsUSA.
“I first came upon SkillsUSA when I was just kind of sitting in here doing some work,” Boyer remembers. “Other students were talking about it, and I got kind of interested in it, and then we went through all the different categories and I found culinary arts and I thought it would be a good fit for me.”
Koehler said SkillsUSA is open to students from seventh grade to high school are allowed to compete in SkillsUSA competitions. Boyer would have taken part in the competition last year, but now that it’s returned, she’s eager to prove what she can do, and whip up from scratch.
Koehler has held the district’s SkillsUSA advisor position for eight years. Through the years Koehler says he’s had students compete in such competitions as the proper way to saddle a horse to the application of make-up.
Both he and Boyer are excited to have the opportunity to test their skills against fellow students from across the state.
“We were excited,” Kohler said when he heard competitions were starting back up. However, he’s never had a student compete in the culinary arts before. “Not so much,” Koehler admits. “This is the first year they’ve actually had the culinary [competition] in NTC in Wausau. This is the first year that we had a chance on getting into it.”
The format of the competition will be taking a page out of the popular cooking game show “Chopped.” Students will be given an assortment of ingredients, and then be told what to cook.
This could include different appetizers or entries and might also include soups, salads and other assorted dishes. This means Boyer will have to know how to cook across a variety of foods and spices.
“They’ll tell us when we get there,” Boyer said. “I’ve been researching on different things, like making sure I know how to make soups and make sure I know the preparation for meat. Obviously I’m not just like cooking at home, which I’ve done at home, but how to actually prepare it and grill it.”
Boyer is hoping pasta dishes will be an item in the competition, citing those as her favorite dishes to cook. Boyer isn’t sure if she’ll make a career out of cooking, but she’s approaching it with an open mind, and eager for the chance to compete.
The only downside for Boyer is that because she’s an eighth grader, she cannot compete in national SkillsUSA competition in Atlanta in June.
“They have a ruling that middle schoolers are not allowed to go to Nationals,” Koehler said. “So even if she takes gold at state, that’s the end of the road for us. I don’t think that’s right, but that’s their ruling.”
Boyer is seeing the silver lining in her predicament, explaining that this will help take some of the pressure off the competition. Plus she’ll have the added benefit of a year of experience when she goes to next year’s competition as a freshman.
“It definitely creates a better thing for next year, knowing that I will be able to go to Nationals,” Boyer says. “I’m obviously aiming for gold no matter what, and obviously if you’re doing something you want to be the best at it. If it has to stop at state, it’s just the way it is.”
While the end of the road will be the state competition for Boyer, cooking companies will be there, so she could away with some swag, such as cookware and various other culinary utensils. She says that she hopes to get other students at Colby involved, and hopes that this can be the launching pad for something more.
“Its definitely a very exciting thing to try and a great new thing to open things up. Maybe I’ll be great at cooking and use it as a career some day.”
