Wahluke High students bring home SkillsUSA medals

MATTAWA — Wahluke High School junior Diana Barber said her performance in regional SkillsUSA competition left her a little unsure going into state competition. While she was satisfied with her performance on the test in the medical math category, she just wasn’t sure.  

“I try not to get my hopes up,” she said. 

She need not have worried. The Wahluke High School junior brought home the state championship. 

For their project in engineering technical design, Oliver Alcon, Miguel Garcia and Jose Lagunas tackled a subject that has challenged scientists, engineers, even alchemists for 1,500 years.  

“We have to find a real-world problem and we had to come up with a solution to it. And what we did was try to use magnetic energy to create some sort of perpetual motion machine that spins for a long time, and it’s going to use magnetic DC current to transfer into electricity,” Alcon said. 

The prototype had the potential to stay in motion for days, although not perpetually. It earned them third place in state competition.  

It was the second time Barbe earned a SkillsUSA state championship, which qualifies her for national competition in Atlanta later this year. She attended the national competition for extemporaneous speaking as a freshman. 

Medical math also asks students to take on a real-world problem. 

“It was medication dosages, converting them for weights, like how much medication you should give someone in kilograms, but your original number was pounds,” she said. 

Competitors got two hours to answer 75 questions, and while it was challenging, Barber said she thought she was prepared. 

“If you memorize basic conversions — pounds to kilograms, inches to centimeters, milligrams to tablespoons, stuff like that — it's not too hard,” she said. “You can make do.”

Barber is a student at the Columbia Basin Technical Skills Center, Moses Lake, in the medical careers program. That provided a good place to study, she said. 

Whether or not she will attend the national competition is to be decided, since it’s an expensive proposition. 

Alcon, Lagunas and Garcia have been working on their project since the start of the school year. Instructor Daniel Barajas said they chose the project. Alcon said they wanted to provide a way to make electricity in situations where other sources weren’t available.  

He cited the example of an earthquake, which could damage the facilities that produce electricity and disrupt distribution systems. People might have access to generators, but the gas that typically powers a generator would eventually run out, and that distribution system too might be interrupted. It was more than a theoretical exercise. 

“We have to build it. We actually ended up creating a little prototype,” he said. “We weren’t able to build it right now with the technology we have, but later on, if we could actually do something big, it would be some sort of flywheel that’s inside of a vacuum-sealed chamber, and use magnetic bearings to reduce friction and air resistance,” he said. 

They found an experiment using those principles conducted in China. While it didn’t produce perpetual motion, they estimated they could keep things in motion for two or three days. 

Barajas said all of the research had to be documented as part of the competition. 

Schools of every size compete at SkillsUSA, most of them a lot bigger — and some with a lot more money — than Wahluke. Barajas said WHS faculty works to come up with ways to ensure students can compete with anybody. He gave credit to engineering teacher John Ellsworth for his work with engineering and science students.  

The bronze medal was especially sweet for Jose Lagunas, who was competing for the third year and had never placed in the medal round, Barajas said. 

Barber said her class choices are part of getting ready for life after high school and a career in medicine. 

“I’d like to be a medical assistant, work in a clinic with patients. I think that is interesting,” she said. 

Alcon, a senior, said he’s been accepted at Whitworth University, and is planning on a career in engineering.  

“I plan to be an aerospace engineer,” he said. 

    From left, Jose Lagunas, Miguel Garcia and Oliver Alcon, Wahluke High School, were medalists in the 2025 SkillsUSA competition.