Los Gatos Weekly-Times

National VICA winners are (from left) Cory Sandusky, Brian Parker and Andrea Palestro.

Los Gatos brings home gold in national VICA competition

By Michelle Alaimo

Andrea Palestro, Brian Parker and Cory Sandusky recently became Los Gatos' newest gold medalists after placing first in the Vocational Industrial Clubs of America (VICA) national championships. The win marks the third time in four years the Los Gatos High School has received a medal for Automated Manufacturing.

"It was remarkable," Ron Cassel, department chairman of industrial technology at LGHS, said. He added that his students were competing against others who were receiving two- to three-hour blocks of automated manufacturing instruction per day. At LGHS, the computer assisted manufacturing (CAM) class is a mere 52 minutes long--yet the school continues to place in the nationals.

"It's just a matter of working together," Sandusky said. "We all separately really knew how to do our jobs before we got together."

According to Sandusky, the group spent time practicing together at De Anza Community College because that was the only local place that had the type of mill the three would use in the nationals.

Cassel explained the championship competition, held June 23 to June 26 in Kansas City, Mo., is grueling because of the time pressure. Each team of three has eight hours to complete the task of drawing a part based on a "napkin sketch," coding a machine to develop a tool path to cut the part and then actually cutting the part. In addition, the team must thoroughly document everything they do and complete a math problem. The LGHS team was the only team to correctly solve the math problem, Cassel said.

Each person has to be able to visualize the part in their head in order to be successful. Sandusky said he was in charge of exporting the computer-assisted drafting (CAD) drawing that Parker had drawn into another computer to develop the tool path. Cassel added that the documentation provided by Palestro was exceptional.

Sandusky, who will attend Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo this fall, Parker, who will attend UC-Santa Cruz, and LGHS senior Palestro were able to attend the conference after they received donations which covered all of the costs except food. The trio advanced to the nationals after winning both the regionals held earlier this year in Salinas and the state competition held in Fresno.

In addition to their gold medals, each of the Los Gatos students won a large set of software. Cassel added there will be more awards and recognition yet to come for the group's achievements.

Sandusky added, "Not many people get a chance to say they are the best in the nation."

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