Local web design students gear up for SkillsUSA ‘nationals’ | Community

SANBORN — Adam Niver (Newfane) and Aiden Torres (Lewiston-Porter), students in the Web Development and Game Design program at Niagara Career and Technical Education Center, were shocked and excited to find out that they had taken a gold medal in web design at the New York State SkillsUSA competition in Syracuse.

“We had to put a lot of creativity into it and did our best,” Niver said. “It was hard because we were both late because of the shuttle bus to go to the fairgrounds and the lunch line.”

“It was very stressful. There was so much going on and the noise level was bad,” Torres added.

The web design competition consisted of teams of two who complete a series of challenges focusing on creating a website for a client and a specific target audience. The teams were judged on meeting the client’s needs, usability and accessibility, and industry standard best practices. The teams were also evaluated on the process they used to meet the challenges and how well they work as a team.

“Honestly, in the beginning of this program, I knew nothing about coding a website. I knew nothing of HTML and I had dabbled in code a little bit,” Niver said.

Torres said he also knew little to nothing about building a website, and both students pointed to their teacher, Michelle LeFauvre, as the reason they fared so well in the SkillsUSA competition.

“She obviously did an excellent job of teaching us, because we took first place,” Torres said. “I think it really helped that she taught us basics like Photoshop. It is a great skill to have.”

Both students said they were surprised by how much they have enjoyed the web development component of the program, since the reason they enrolled was for the game design component.

“I plan on going to college for computer science to be a video game developer, but I had a lot of fun learning about web design,” Niver said.

Torres also intends to pursue game development as a career and thinks his web design skills will make him more “marketable.”

As state-level SkillsUSA gold medalists, Niver and Torres will compete at the national level, at the world’s largest gathering of America’s future skilled workforce, next month in Atlanta.

“We have never been out of state for something related to school before. We are both feeling the pressure,” Niver said. “We really want to do well at the competition not only for ourselves, but Mrs. LeFauve.”

Lisa Bielmeier is the public relations director for Orleans/Niagara BOCES.