A student at the Delaware Area Career Center was recently named the south central regional officer for the SkillsUSA Organization after being elected by fellow SkillsUSA students.

Will Johnson, a senior at Westerville South High School in the engineering program at the DACC, was elected to the position last month after a rigorous application and election process. Johnson said he had to fill out an application, take a test about SkillsUSA, and give a two-minute speech.

Gavin Bull, a senior in the engineering course, was in charge of DACC’s voting delegates. Bull said he and his team spent time promoting Johnson with pins and made agreements with other schools.

“You can go around and essentially trade votes,” Bull said. “We talked with other teams and made agreements to vote for each other.”

Bull said he was excited to see Johnson get elected.

“(It made me) really happy,” Bull said. “He gave a really good speech. We all worked really hard and that paid off with him getting elected.”

DACC SkillsUSA advisor Kelly Kohl said it has been between 20 and 25 years since the DACC has had a student serve as a regional officer.

“I am very proud of Will and his accomplishments,” Kohl said. “He has worked very hard for this position and has displayed his leadership skills over the past two years to get to this point and help lead our school in SkillsUSA. He went to nationals last summer, and I got to spend the week with him and five other students demonstrating both their leadership and technical skills, their maturity, and their enthusiasm for the student organization. I knew after that trip to Atlanta that he was going to do great things.”

Johnson said getting elected “felt pretty good,” and he was only a little nervous during the event.

“I don’t want to sound cocky, but I was like, ‘I’m going to go in and do the best I can,’ but I think I had a pretty good speech, and public speaking is not that much of an issue for me,” Johnson said.

He added the DACC always does well at the competition part of SkillsUSA, and he was glad he could represent the school on the leadership side.

“It’s pretty cool to be honest,” Johnson said. “I think this career center hasn’t been as involved in the leadership side. It’ll be really cool to incorporate both sides.”

Ahead of the next SkillsUSA event in March, Johnson said he had to attend a training institute.

“(They) throw as much information as they can at you,” he said. “I didn’t know I could take in that much information.”

Johnson said he’s excited for future events, and he’s already done a job interview where the interviewer noticed his SkillsUSA achievements.

“I’m honestly looking forward to it,” he said. “It’ll look great on a resume. It’ll help them know this guy is serious about what he does.”

Kohl said she believes Johnson’s time with SkillsUSA will be beneficial to him moving forward.

“I think that the experience in his involvement with SkillsUSA is going to continue to help him in the future, to set goals, work hard, fine-tune his craft and technical skills, and continue to be a leader and role model to others,” Kohl said. “I am very very proud of Will and all the other CTSO officers in our district! They are tomorrow’s leaders that will make a difference in helping to shape our businesses, industries and communities.”

Additionally, Johnson took first place in the “60 Second Elevator Speech” contest, and his team took first and second place in the Goodwill Tour Presentation and Opening/Closing Ceremony competitions, respectively.