NC culinary, hairstyling students show their skills at provincial and national competitions

Niagara College students showed their mastery of culinary arts as well as hairstyling at the 2018 Skills Ontario Competition, held May 7-9 at the Toronto Congress Centre.

NC dominated the podium in the culinary arts competition, with second-year Culinary Management student Quentin Petkovich bringing home the gold medal for the second year in a row, and first-year student Hunter Spicer picking up bronze.

Following his provincial win, Petkovich took NC’s winning recipe to the national stage. He won a silver medal in cooking at the 2018 Skills Canada competition, held June 4-5 in Edmonton. The win will be icing on the cake for Petkovich, who will graduate from NC’s Culinary Management program on June 19.

Both students trained rigorously for the competition under the supervision of Olaf Mertens, chef professor at NC’s Canadian Food and Wine Institute.

“Mentoring our students is about pushing them to new heights, skills, techniques, and enhancing their soft skills,” said Mertens. “This regimen continues to serve these students well in the classroom, lab, in industry and in life.”

At Skills Ontario, NC’s podium-topping didn’t stop with culinary. NC Hairstyling student Melissa Dolton also won gold in the Hairstyling competition. This was the Hairstyling program’s second year of competition and also its second gold. Joe Abbruscato, program coordinator for NC’s Hairstyling and Hairstyling Apprenticeship remarked that the back-to-back wins not only reflect the quality of NC students, but also the team effort among program staff and faculty.

Quentin Petkovich and Hunter Spicer stand proudly as culinary arts gold and bronze medalists, respectively, at the Skills Ontario Competition. In June, Petkovich went on to win silver at Skills Canada.