SIERRA VISTA — Michael Dominguez was immediately intrigued by the contest organized by the Arizona section of the American Welding Society. In fact, he was pretty confident he’d win it.
Never mind that he only started welding a few of months ago, when he stepped foot onto the Cochise College campus as a freshman this fall semester. His dad knows how to weld, so he’d seen the process many times before. Combine that with Dominguez’s guidance from Cochise College welding instructors Randy Fox and Dr. Ralph Long, and he ended up in a tie for first place in the state-wide competition held in October.
Michael Dominguez stands with his welding project last month.
“This brought Cochise to the forefront,” said Long, a member of the associate faculty at Cochise for the last four years. “We’d been in the background of the welding society for a long time.”
The Arizona section of the AWS held the contest for students to have the opportunity to create something for the national AWS president, John Mendoza, to take home to Texas as a gift for his attendance at the state’s October meeting. The contest was open to students across the state and the only criteria was that it had to be an Arizona-themed project. Dominguez was one of five who entered and the only one from Cochise College.
Dominguez may be a novice when it comes to welding, but he has quite a competitive streak. His teachers announced the contest in early September and Dominguez began brainstorming things about the state he moved to from California several years ago.
His completed project attached five separate silhouette pieces to a base. Metal shapes of two saguaro cactuses, The End of the Trail figure, and Monument Valley each sat in the forefront, completed by attaching the state of Arizona behind the figures as a background. Dominguez fixed a star in the middle of the state, with red and yellow paint coming out like rays of sun, and blue paint on the lower half, just like the state flag.
“It’s the centennial year, so I wanted to incorporate all Arizona,” Dominguez said.
The saguaro cactus is native to the Sonoran Desert and its blossom is the state wildflower of Arizona. “The End of the Trail,” originally a statue by James Earle Fraser, is an image of a dejected Native American figure atop a horse, and it is one of the most recognized symbols of the American West. Monument Valley, which lies in the northern part of Arizona near the Four Corners area, is a famous cluster of vast sandstone buttes.
Long and Fox, who is the college’s technology department chair, were impressed with their student’s reflection on the state and its history. The only thing they were skeptical about was covering the state of Arizona with paint.
Dominguez never swayed from his vision, and his instructors now agree that the paint made the piece stand out.
“I pushed Michael real hard, and Randy helped him a lot,” Long said. “And (Mendoza) was impressed.”
Dominguez, his parents and Long attended the October meeting held at the East Valley Institute of Technology in Mesa on Oct. 26, when Dominguez presented Mendoza with his gift. In return, the Arizona section of the AWS gave Dominguez what Long estimates to be about $500 worth of welding supplies, including a grinder, a helmet, gloves and sleeves, among many others.
Dominguez earned his GED from Cochise College and is planning to join the Marine Corps. Originally, he was going to take classes this semester to earn only his necessary 15 college credits, but now he’s looking to stay for the spring.
“This is a good program,” Dominguez said of Cochise’s welding program. “They all teach well and help you a lot. From what my dad told me, they used to just tell you what to do and let you teach yourself. Here, they actually show you how to do it.”