In Kansas City, they were sweating.

“You know what’s happening in my stomach right now?” area trade school instructor and coach H.R. Thomas asked. “If you were in there, you’d be screaming to get out.”

The convention in Kentucky has grown every year, so much that Skills USA has decided to move the venue to Louisville from its current Kansas City location. The convention is the largest of its kind in the area, drawing nearly 10,000 registrants.

All across the country, Skills USA held weeklong competitions.

Meanwhile in Georgia, trade school students were cheering

One of the toughest competitions had to be in criminal justice. Roswell, GA’s Holly Groover from Centennial High School took home the high school gold. Meanwhile, post-secondary web design gold was won by Illinois Central College.

Don Roberts of the Excelsior Springs Area Career Center said SkillsUSA “teaches leadership abilities, how to work within a team with others, and how to compete. We have kids who come to us who won’t look you in the eye and will barely speak to you. After they’ve been through this program, they develop confidence and ability, and some will become leaders of the school.”

Thomas agreed: “I’ve had students come back five years later and tell me they got their job because they had SkillsUSA on their resume, and the other applicants didn’t.”

To read about all the winners go to the Skills USA website.

To learn more about criminal justice view our criminal justice schools.

There’s a creepy story being carried by CNN and many other major news sources about Timothy Krajcir, who has pleaded guilty to first degree in the 1982 slaying of an Illinois coed, Deborah Sheppard. He has since been charged with five other murders, after confessing to having committed those also. Police confess to having been baffled by the cases for many years but it may very likely be the fact that Krajcir has a degree in criminal justice that allowed him to evade prosecution until now. Krajcir was a suspect in some of the murders but there was no evidence to convict him. One police officer said, “If he was studying criminal justice and law enforcement, he definitely would know what police were looking for and how to avoid detection.” There were no fingerprints at any of the crime scenes and little other evidence. The advent of DNA testing meant that tissue samples from the crime scenes did point to Krajcir.

Kjajcir has confessed to nine killings in all. His degree in Criminal Justice is from Southern Illinois University, acquired after he had been released from prison over thirty years ago. He had been serving time for rape.