SAIT students ready to showcase their skills at WorldSkills 2026 competition in China
Five SAIT students have spent months training to compete at the highest level of their trades in Shanghai, but the biggest test will come when they have to put that preparation to work on the world stage.
More than 1,400 competitors from more than 70 countries and regions will gather in Shanghai, China, for WorldSkills 2026, which runs from Sept. 22 to 27.
SAIT’s five competitors are Tyler Gunther in industrial mechanics, Tate McGarry in cabinetmaking, Jacob McClelland in CNC milling, Ben Jamison in aircraft maintenance and Carter Kokot in automobile technology.
The five make up SAIT’s largest contingent at WorldSkills since Calgary hosted the competition in 2009.
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SAIT also has more competitors at this year’s competition than any other Canadian educational institution.
For McGarry, preparing for the competition has meant training in Calgary, at home in Lethbridge and overseas in Germany and Taiwan.
The cabinetmaking competition will require him to build a piece of furniture with extreme precision.
“It’s a blind project for us, so I have no idea what I’m building until about an hour beforehand, so I’m excited to see what they came up with to build,” McGarry said. “It’s also pretty stressful, so I’m kind of excited for the finish of it, but hopefully I can get it all together and finish strong.”
McGarry has always been interested in building things and first got into cabinetmaking while he was in high school, where he competed in cabinetmaking competitions.
He later won a national competition, which introduced him to the possibility of joining Team Canada.
While in high school, he noticed an unused metal lathe sitting in the back of his mechanics classroom and asked his teacher if he could try using it.
He began making small projects, including chess pawns, rings and a small crown, and his teacher suggested he should consider becoming a machinist.
5News aggregated this summary from the outlet’s public feed. The full article, with all the context, is on calgaryherald.com — the content belongs to Calgary Herald.
