by: Jad Daou

SANFORD – Out of all the schools in every state and territory in the US that features SkillsUSA,  Lee County High School was one of three to be featured in a recruitment video series.

“We were one of three schools in the country, or one of three high schools in the country, chosen to participate in a recruitment video series of the national offices is working on through this week,” said LCHS SkillsUsa coordinator Quin Henry. “So, it’ll be used nationwide in a recruitment feature. We historically had some pretty big success at Lee County High School, few years back we had the national president came from this school, we’ve kind of made a mark on the national level and I guess that’s why they chose us as one of the schools to be showcased.” 

Students participating in the video expressed their interests from this club. Gilliian Garrison and Will Laudate both were introduced to this the same way. 

“We’re both a part of the engineering academy, which you know, means you don’t have to be a part of engineering academy to join skills, but it helps because Mr. Henry is the coordinator for SkillsUSA,” Garrison said. “He let us know about the opportunity as early as my freshman year, which was during COVID, so it presented opportunities to join as a freshman. He’s only providing more opportunities sophomore, junior year.” 

This video will shine a lot of attention on LCHS. 

“We’re one in three schools in the country plus territories that have been chosen for this video. Out of every body we were chosen for that so that’s pretty cool,” Laudate said. “It speaks on how Mr. Henry’s done with the SkillsUSA program” Garrison added.

The filming took place Wednesday. The film shoot went well and they’re doing a couple more components at the Central Carolina Community College. There are high school and community college levels for this program. 

There is not an exact date for when the video will debut, but there is hope editing will be quick for the video to be shown.

“Ultimately, it’s gonna come down to editing and their side of things so, its all at the national level,” Henry said. “They said they would give us a copy as soon as they got it, so its a professional video film crew that came out with directors and stuff out of Lincoln, Nebraska and they flew in to do the shoot so however long it takes them to do it.”  

Henry said the students did everything they were supposed to and represented the school well.

“I think we got a lot of good footage,” Henry said. “I’m real proud of all the students that participated.”

SkillsUSA is a national organization that promotes career and technical education training with nearly 20,000 members nationwide.