Reprint from the Progress Times - August 3, 2007
©Progress Times 2007 - All Rights Reserved

La Joya grad places in national competition

After a year of hard work and training, Samuel Garza got another crack at the SKILLS USA national carpentry competition where, last year, he placed 11th.

This year, Garza pushed himself harder and, in a tightly judged competition, he came in seventh. Not that it matters much to his father.

"I was hoping for better, but when I saw the actual competition, I was very pleased," said Lauro Garza, Samuel’s father and mentor. "The first seven or eight people in the competition were very close."

The national competition, which is held every year and is in its 42nd year, is a multi-million dollar event that occupies a space equivalent to 16 football fields. Just this year alone, there were over 5,000 contestants in 87 separate events. Nearly 1,500 judges and contest organizers from labor and management worked day and night to put the event on.

Samuel’s competition, held in Kansas City, Missouri, consisted of a written test and a timed building competition. Samuel and his fellow competitors were all given the same plans and materials at 8:30 in the morning and, once the horn sounded, they all had six and a half hours to build a three wall room, a set of stairs and two roofs.

Samuel started strong.

"He held the lead for about the first hour and a half," said Lauro. "But when he got to the metal studs he slowed down a bit because we don’t work with those very much."

Samuel, who graduated from La Joya High School last year and is enrolled at the University of Texas Pan American, said he’s pleased with his work but thinks he probably should have done better.

"Some of the points they took off were for little things," said Samuel.

Samuel first began working with wood at the age of nine when he would help his father out at work. At 17, Samuel joined Bernard Clein’s carpentry class at la Joya High School and that, as well as working weekends and summers gave him all the experience he could ask for.

Now, Samuel hopes to carry on the family business, if not in a slightly different way. He plans on majoring in architectural engineering.