An 18-year-old Holy Trinity Academy student celebrated a silver finish at the Skills Canada National Competition last week.

Matthew MacDonald traveled to Winnipeg with instructor Louise Niven to compete in the category of IT Software Application Level II.

"For Microsoft Word, they had me formatting some reports and some official documents to make sure they looked professional and they were efficiently organized," MacDonald says. "For Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access, it's more about the math and the formulas behind it. It's a little bit of computer programming involved and its stuff with money; amortization tables, creating budgets and doing various calculations with formulas to ensure that information is correct and efficiently calculated."

MacDonald had previously earned a spot on Team Alberta after winning gold at the provincial competition held in Edmonton last month.

He spent hours researching and practicing formulas to get his skills in shape before the national competition. Once in Winnipeg, he competed, in his category, against five other students from various provinces. He says he felt confident in his performance and was looking forward to the closing ceremony, held on Saturday June 3, where the winners were announced.

"I was confident in my products and the finished results and I was happy to head into the closing ceremonies expecting a big result," he says.

He says he enjoyed visiting Winnipeg for the first time ever, even though the city was experiencing record-breaking heat at the time, and was thrilled with the results of the competition.

"I'm really happy with silver," he says. "At that moment, when they called my name, I was just ecstatic. All of Team Alberta stood up and we were all cheering and I grabbed a flag as I ran up to the podium. I was really proud of myself and the work that I put in."

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