South Tech graduate gets top honors at national competition

Matthew Vicari, a recent South Tech Academy graduate and winner of the Pat Oliphant award, was Florida’s representative in the National SkillsUSA Internetworking Competition in Kansas City last week.

The SkillsUSA Internetworking competition is considered one of the most challenging competitions conducted by Cisco Systems, Inc.

The secondary-high school competition had 34 states competing over a three-day period. Each competitor was scored in nine areas of skill, including structured cabling, network troubleshooting & monitoring, basic router configuration, advanced router configuration and LAN/WAN design.

Vicari received the highest score in six out of the nine skilled areas.

Clarence Vaughn, program instructor for South Tech, said that Vicari is a South Tech success story and a prime example of what his program produces.

The First Place Industry award consist of an expense-paid trip for two to Cisco corporate headquarters in San Jose, Calif.

South Tech Academy President Jim Kidd said Vicari is another example of the level of commitment his students achieve in the academy.

Mike Rothman can be reached at mkrothman@tribune.com.

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

Name:

Email Address:

URL:

Remember personal info?

Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style)

To help keep spam off our site, please enter the letter "l" in the field below:

About This Blog

Mike Rothman
Mike Rothman graduated from the University of Florida with a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a Master’s Degree in Management. He grew up in South Florida and has been back working here since July 2006. Mike wrote for numerous publications previously including the Gainesville Sun, GatorBait Magazine and Inspin.com, where he was the NBA Expert.

When Mike is not hitting the streets of Boynton Beach and Delray Beach looking for stories, he can be found playing sports or spending time with friends.

He also enjoys provoking his fellow Hometown Downtown columnist, Dave DiPino, for the sake of good stories, of course. He can be reached at mkrothman@tribune.com or at 954-871-1233.