HAMPDEN – Two vocational students and recent graduates from Hampden Academy earned high honors at a national vocational skills championship in Kansas City, Mo., last Saturday.

At an awards ceremony on June 29 at the Kemper Arena, SkillsUSA-VICA awarded Jason Leighton a gold medal in the residential plumbing division and Greg Rollins a silver medal in the carpentry division.

“This has really been the biggest accomplishment in my life so far,” Leighton said of his achievement.

As stated in the group’s mission statement, SkillsUSA-VICA is a national organization serving more than a quarter-million high school and college students enrolled in training programs in technical, skilled and service occupations.

The 18-year-old Leighton has spent the last two years honing his plumbing abilities at United Technology Center in Bangor. Leighton started off learning the basics, cutting pipe and soldering and moved on to the set-up of water heaters in the last year.

He won the state SkillsUSA-VICA competition in March, and quickly decided preparation for nationals was in order. Leighton asked the carpentry division at UTC to build him a replica of the plumbing mock-up used at nationals. Working from a small picture, carpenters recreated the two-wall workstation, complete with plumbing fixtures and pipes.

“I worked on it for two months, taking it apart and putting it back together again so I wouldn’t be blind to what they were going to give me,” Leighton explained.

Leighton was one of 18 students from UTC and 135 from the state to take part in the National SkillsUSA-VICA Championships. More than 4,000 students competed in 72 different vocations at the competition.

At 7:45 a.m. on Thursday, June 28, Leighton and 37 other competitors filed into Bartle Hall and lined up at workstations around a raised judging platform. Over the next seven and one-half hours, Leighton plumbed up a sink, a toilet floor drain, a utility sink and a water heater.

Leighton left his mock-up when time was called at 3:15 p.m. Judges examined soldering joints for tightness and tested the lines with 50 pounds of air pressure. They rated the quality of work, as well as the students’ ability to follow oral instructions and read blueprints.

Leighton said he felt confident about his work after he finished, but he wouldn’t actually know the results until Friday night’s closing ceremonies at Kemper Arena.

“I knew that if I had any shot at all, I had to beat Utah,” Leighton recalled.

The only gold medal UTC had won at the national championships was in plumbing in 1999. Always a strong state in the plumbing competition, Utah had placed fifth that year.

“When they got to my category, everyone from Maine was silent,” Leighton said. “And then they announced that Utah had taken second place. I almost didn’t stand up when they announced that I had won. My teacher was shaking me and everyone was screaming. It was awesome.”

Leighton posed for pictures with winners from the other vocations and then it was on to the prize tables where he received more than $1,000 in tools, including a torch set-up, wrenches and a brand new drill from competition sponsors, DeWalt.

“They pointed at this table covered with tools and said, ‘This is all yours,'” Leighton said smiling. “I had a friend help me carry it all out in a big box.”

Leighton has enlisted in a six-year program with the Air Force and will start basic training later this summer at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.

Greg Rollins, a friend and classmate of Leighton at UTC, also received commendations on his performance.

On his way to a silver medal in the carpentry division, Rollins had to set up steel joists for a floor, cover them with plywood, cut rafters and build two different walls. Rollins had to attach sheet rock to both and prepare an opening for a window to be hung.

“I thought there would be a lot more kids that would have their routines down cold,” Rollins said about the competition. “But I finished early and I felt pretty comfortable.”

Rollins has enrolled in the carpentry program at Eastern Maine Technical College.

Also receiving silver medals in the secondary section were Scott Morency of Lewiston Regional Technical Center for extemporaneous speaking and Scott Libby of the Mid-Maine Technology Center for graphic communications.