Delgado Ford ASSET Students Win Gold and Bronze Medals at SkillsUSA Louisiana Competition

April 27, 2023

Over the past 10 years, Delgado Community College Ford ASSET students have won 15 medals in Automotive Service Technology at the Louisiana SkillsUSA competition, held in April.

From 2013 to 2023 Delgado’s Ford ASSET students have won the SkillsUSA gold medal eight times, the silver medal three times, and the bronze medal four times. No Delgado students competed in 2020 or 2021 because of COVID.

This month, four Delgado Ford ASSET students competed at the SkillsUSA statewide event in Alexandria, LA, and two of those students won medals.  

Conner Thibodeaux, a first-year Ford ASSET student, won the gold medal. Nicholas Johnston, a second-year Ford ASSET student, won the Bronze medal. 

Winning the gold medal qualifies us to compete in the national SkillsUSA event in June," said Chris McDonald, Ford ASSET instructor at Delgado and SkillsUSA adviser. “I am very proud of our students and they deserve this recognition for their achievements."

The national SkillsUSA event will take place in Atlanta.

McDonald has brought Delgado’s Ford ASSET students to all of the Louisiana SkillsUSA competitions since 2013. In 2018, those Ford ASSET students won all three medals in the statewide competition—gold, silver, and bronze. The consistently high achievements of his students speaks to the rigor and high quality of the Delgado’s Ford ASSET program, McDonald said.

Students entering the Ford ASSET program must be sponsored by a participating Ford dealer who provides supervised work experience for approximately eight weeks of each semester. The other half of each semester is spent in classes at Delgado.

The Louisiana State SkillsUSA Conference is an annual event held at the state level to allow students from all Louisiana community colleges to compete in over 100 categories ranging from 3D Visualization and Animation to Welding Sculpture.

The Automotive Service Technology (AST) competition is consistent with the automobile technician task list outlined in guidelines published by the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) and the ASE Education Foundation. AST competitors demonstrate their ability to perform jobs or skills selected from those standards as determined by the SkillsUSA Championships technical committee.