News
CCC Students Compete at SkillsUSA Nationals
June 25, 2026
Three Central Community College students earned medals at the SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference June 1-5 in Atlanta. Seven other CCC students also competed.
The SkillsUSA championships are the nation’s largest hands-on workforce development event for middle school, high school and college and postsecondary students enrolled in career and technical education programs.
Wyatt Kreutzer of Kearney and Hunter Trumble of Aurora, both Hastings Campus students, won the gold medal in the additive manufacturing competition. The pair created an attachment for a linear rail that would assist the launch of Styrofoam gliders. Kruetzer said he and Trumble did not know about the project beforehand and they had three hours on the first day of competition to draft and refine a concept and request the necessary materials. On the second day, they had three hours to create the attachment on a 3D printer using a variety of resins.
“Honestly, my partner and I were pretty shocked,” said Kreutzer, who earned an advanced manufacturing design technology (AMDT) degree in May and will earn a drafting and design technology degree in December. “They called third place and we’re like, ‘That’s not us.’ And then they called second place and we’re like, ‘No way, we won this?’ We were absolutely dumbfounded.”
Trumble said he too was not expecting to take the gold medal, especially considering some of their competitors were students at four-year institutions and one was even a master’s degree candidate.
“This being our second year, familiarity with the competition and how things work there definitely helped,” said Trumble, who is completing his AMDT degree at CCC-Hastings. “I think a lot of what docked a lot of teams’ points was not giving themselves time to save files, get everything finalized and turned in on time. We tried to have at least 10 minutes at the end just to make sure we were done on time.”
Zander Sohl of Kearney, also a CCC-Hastings student, was a gold medal winner as well. He took the top spot in the career and technical educator contest. Sohl had to give a seven to 10-minute teaching presentation about the problems of mid-weld defects. He said his presentation went over by two seconds, but the judges told him they had problems with the timing device and he was granted a bit of grace.
“I’m super proud about winning gold,” said Sohl, who will earn his welding diploma from CCC before transferring to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to get his teaching credentials. “I think nationals is the coolest place to be. There are so many people and I learned so many things, not just related to my contest, but also from the vendors who were representing companies.”
The following is a list of the other CCC students who participated in the SkillsUSA nationals, their hometowns and placements:
- Columbus Campus: Ashton Behmerwohld (Mason City) and Carson Kunze (Grand Island) – mechatronics, 4th place
- Grand Island Campus: Logan Bennett (Aurora) – firefighting, 6th place
- Hastings Campus: Trevor Taubenheim (Kearney) – heavy equipment operator, 6thplace
- Hastings Campus: Grace Ciancio (Fullerton) – culinary arts, 14th place
- Hastings Campus: Will Abood III (Ravenna) – CNC 3-Axis milling programmer, 15thplace
- Hastings Campus: Lauren Pohlenz (Doniphan) – baking and pastry arts, 23rdplace
More than 19,000 students, teachers, education leaders and representatives participated in the 2026 SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference. The CCC SkillsUSA students earned the right to go to nationals by winning their respective competitions at the SkillsUSA Nebraska conference in April.