Staff photo / R. Michael Semple Mahoning County Career and Technical Center student James Lipjanic, 17, of Boardman, competes in a welding competition Friday during the Northeast Regionals SkillsUSA competition at MCCTC. An estimated 700 students representing 29 northeast Ohio high schools, vocational schools and career centers participated.

CANFIELD — Samantha Vallee and Samantha Hastings are poised to do their parts to make the world a slightly more beautiful and attractive place — one color and cut at a time.

“I’ve always been interested in cosmetology since I was 8 years old. I enjoyed doing my mom’s hair,” Hastings, a senior at Cuyahoga Valley Career Center in Brecksville, said.

Hastings’ work on beautifying hair doesn’t stop there, however: The teen also enjoys washing, cutting and styling her other people’s hair. In addition, she secured an internship to work under the instruction of a manager of a beauty salon in Middleburg Heights, Hastings said.

She and Vallee, a junior who also attends Cuyahoga Valley Career Center, have their sights set on the cosmetology field. Both of them received an opportunity to further perfect their craft, because they were among an estimated 700 students representing 29 northeast Ohio high schools, vocational schools and career centers who took part in the Ohio Northeast Regionals SkillsUSA competition Friday at the Mahoning County Career & Technical Center, 7300 N. Palmyra Road.

During the six-hour event, the students took part in 23 in-house competitions across a variety of skill categories such as cosmetology, collision repair, crime scene investigation, information-technology services, criminal justice, welding, medical terminology and speech delivery, Lisa Schiraldi-Argiro, MCCTC’s SkillsUSA adviser and a cosmetology instructor, noted.

“I wanted to do cosmetology since I was in kindergarten,” Vallee said, adding that she intends to enroll at Kent State University after high school to further study cosmetology and work in the fashion industry.

The primary focus for Gavin Michels, 18, of Boardman, is photography, the field in which he competed Friday.

“We were given the objective of what kind of pictures we should be taking,” Michels, an MCCTC senior, noted.

For the competition, he and the others were challenged to focus on depth of field and the subject, then choose what the students felt were their four best photographs before editing them and using Photoshop. They had about 40 minutes each to snap photos and edit them, Michels explained.

Also, the students were tasked with using Photoshop and editing techniques to a damaged photograph of a family to remove scratches, marks and other blemishes from it, he said.

Michels, who favors wildlife photography, including deer in Mill Creek Park, added that he has an eye on working in graphic design, though his career choice is uncertain.

Being in Friday’s competition generated a bit of natural nervousness for Michels, but his primary focus was “making sure I get enough images in the time given and the best I can make it,” he added.

“The ultimate goal is for them to get their cosmetology license before they graduate high school,” said Barbara Maras, a cosmetology instructor for juniors and seniors at the Trumbull Career and Technical Center in Champion.

Those of her students who qualify will travel in early May to Columbus to take their cosmetology board licensing exam, which will consist of “lab and theory,” she explained

Friday’s SkillsUSA competition is valuable also because it allows the participants to sharpen their skills and enhance their dedication toward becoming successful in their fields of interest, said Maras, who graduated from Cuyahoga Valley Vocational School in 1987 and has worked 30 years at a salon.

Maras, who’s also a 15-year TCTC instructor, added that the competition provided an opportunity for the students to bolster their self-confidence and social skills before they enter the field, which promises a solid job market. Maras also thanked her co-teacher, Stephanie Berarducci, for her assistance and guidance.

SkillsUSA is one of the country’s largest career-tech student organizations that also provides valuable leadership skills, Schiraldi-Argiro said.

Those who finished in the top four of each of Friday’s competitions earned the right to be in a state competition in March in Columbus. The first-place finishers in that event will compete in the national competition this summer in Atlanta, Schiraldi-Argiro added.