Texas Masonry Council reps teach the trade to Copperas Cove students

By BRITTANY FHOLER
Cove Leader-Press 

Several dozen students at Copperas Cove High School had the chance to learn how to lay bricks and build a brick wall at the Masonry Rocks program orchestrated by the Texas Masonry Council. 
Over a period of two days, more than 50 high school students first learned about how to lay down brick and mortar using training mortar before getting the opportunity to try their hand and have free reign and creativity at building a wall during a friendly competition. 
The students spent their morning learning and practicing the method of laying down the mortar then the brick and so on to build a wall at least twice, and the competition began after a lunch catered by CCHS culinary arts students. 
Masons with Brazos Masonry went through and judged each wall and selected the top three. 
CCHS Career and Technology Education coordinator Brenda Drawdy Stanford is on the state board of directors for Skills USA Texas with Tony Topping, who is the executive director of the Texas Masonry Council. 
She said that Topping told her about the program and how they go into different schools to share about masonry as a career path, and so she invited the group out to Copperas Cove High School. 
The Texas Masonry Council provided the bricks, the mortar, the trowels and the expertise and guidance for the program and its participants. 
“It’s an amazing program, and there’s such a need for it that they’re willing to do all that,” Drawdy Stanford said about the Masonry Rocks program.
Copperas Cove ISD does not currently offer a masonry class or course for certification. The program was actually held in the school’s welding workshop attached to room 337. 
“We don’t have a masonry program now, although there’s some interest and some school board members have shown interest,” Drawdy Stanford said. “[This is] just to see if there is an interest.”
Drawdy Stanford said that there are contractor companies in the area that are in need of workers, and there are students who want to start working this summer. 
“One of those contractors says he has to turn jobs down because he doesn’t have skilled labor, and he has 900 employees right now, and he needs to double it,” she added. “So, there is a great need for it right here in Central Texas. It’s an excellent career. When you go industrial, starting salary is around $62,000 a year.”
Ignacio Sauceda, who goes by “Nacho”, is a former educator who now works for the Texas Masonry Council. Sauceda said that this program works to introduce the industry of masonry to students and maybe entice them to join the field. 
“The goal of this opportunity is for the kids to have fun and gain some interest in our industry and to recruit them and get them out and working in our industry and build up what we have now because there is a big shortage in the masonry industry right now throughout the country and especially in the state of Texas,” Sauceda said. 
Someone brand new to masonry, with no experience, could start earning $15 an hour in the commercial side of the industry, and someone with more experience and a certification can start earning around $25 an hour, Sauceda said. 
Sauceda said that the students were enthusiastic, excited and doing great. 
“They’re showing some extremely creative walls, some of the design stuff I hadn’t seen before,” he said. “It’s really cool. It’s really neat to see the creativity. This generation, these younger kids, think very different than what we probably know.”
The winners of Tuesday’s competition were Adam Pike in runner up/3rd place, Blayze Grantland in 2nd place and Caleb Kenney in 1st place. 
Kenney, a senior, said that he has worked for a construction company during the summer for the past five years and has learned lots, but he had never had the opportunity to learn about masonry before. 
Kenney said he wasn’t expecting to win the competition but was happy for the experience. He said his favorite part was learning the soldier course, where the bricks were vertical in a row among the horizontal laying bricks. 
“I’m glad it happened,” Kenney said. “I got to learn something new.”