Deer Lakes and A.W. Beattie students recognized at national skills competition

Two Deer Lakes and A.W. Beattie Career Center graduates got a taste of the national spotlight after placing in SkillsUSA national competitions.

SkillsUSA is a workforce development organization for students that helps develop personal, workplace and technical skills.

Paiton Yeager, 18, of West Deer competed on a team with two of her A.W. Beattie classmates. North Hills graduate Rowan Ashmore, Northgate graduate Cassidy Auth and Yeager were charged with creating a promotional bulletin board that promotes their chapter of SkillsUSA.

“It’s basically sports, but for vo-tech people,” Yeager said. “Competitions are based on our trades. It teaches a lot of leadership things, but adds a competitive aspect.”

Yeager and her team are members of the advertising design program at A.W. Beattie.

The three worked throughout the 2024-25 school year to take their creation to the state level competition in April, where they took home first place.

The win gave them entry for the SkillsUSA national conference, where they competed against students from across America. Yeager said it was the first time A.W. Beattie students made an appearance at nationals.

“It was a lot,” she said. “We could only use paper products. No wood, metal or anything like that was allowed on the board. Things on the board had to be interchangeable but not move. It took a while to figure out what we wanted to do.”

They were also required to provide a professional portfolio documenting the development and construction of the bulletin board. Judges heard oral presentations of the process, purpose and educational value of the bulletin board.

Yeager and her teammates traveled to Georgia in June for the national competition, where they were awarded second place.

“We were happy to be there,” Yeager said. “We were confident, but we weren’t expecting top three.”

At the same convention center in Georgia, Morgan McCloskey, 18, was competing with a T-shirt design that won her first place at the state competition in April. Also a graduate of the advertising and design program at A.W. Beattie, McCloskey decided to compete in her first SkillsUSA competition her senior year.

She was charged with designing a shirt that represented Pennsylvania and preparing an oral presentation about her design. She decided to make Pennsylvania’s most popular groundhog the center of the design.

“Punxsutawney Phil is a really big part of Pennsylvania, and a lot of people know about him,” McCloskey said.

Since her design won states, every student from Pennsylvania competing at nationals wore shirts with McCloskey’s design on them.

“It was really fun walking around and seeing people wearing it,” she said. “I got to tell them I made it. It was really cool.”

McCloskey said the competitive side of her was a little disappointed about not being on the podium, but was still happy with seventh place nationally.

“I’m really proud that I was able to get into the top 10,” she said.

McCloskey and Yeager will both be pursuing graphic design majors at La Roche University. Yeager will be playing soccer there and McCloskey is hoping to continue her path in SkillsUSA.