BEDFORD- Bella Landstrom is a junior at BNL who has really taken full advantage of what the NLCS Career Center has to offer. A student in the Construction Trades Program last school year, she is now in Kenny Turner’s Collision Repair class and plans on taking welding in her senior year.
Bella competed in and won the SkillsUSA regional competition for Auto Collision Repair at Vincennes University on February 3, where she took home a $2,500 scholarship. She will now move on to state competition at the Indianapolis State Fairgrounds on April 19 and 20, where she will compete for more scholarship money and a spot in the national competition in Kansas City, Missouri.
The regional competition consisted of a written test that covered what the students had learned in the classroom and a hands-on lab portion that put their skills to the test. “My favorite part of the competition was finding a different way to do it than the other students,” she said of her lab portion of the contest.
Thinking outside the box is what landed her a ticket to the state competition, and its also evident in her plans post-high school. Bella probably has a different idea of what to do than most girls her age; “I want to learn how to weld and travel and be a pipeline welder.” It’s her ambition to move to Colorado.
Thank you Bella for taking the time to talk with WBIW and good luck at the competition.
