MEXICO — Acing a test on medical terminology in her certified nursing assistant course this winter at the Region 9 School of Applied Technology helped Nicole “Nikki” Dumond win a gold medal this month at the SkillsUSA Maine Championships in Bangor.

Dumond, 17, is a junior at Dirigo High School and lives in Dixfield with her mother, Mickey Comeau, a disabled Army flight nurse veteran.

Winning the top medal in the March 5 and 6 event qualified the Madawaska native to compete in the national championships on June 22-26 in Louisville, Ky.

It also furthered Dumond’s desire to pursue a college education at the University of Maine for a career as a physician in gynecology, oncology, pediatrics or emergency medicine.

“They gave us like a list of competitions that we could enter and we took a huge medical exam within our CNA course and I got a 100 on that,” Dumond said Wednesday at the vocational school. “I did perfect on that, so I felt like I would be able to go and compete in medical terminology and do well.”

But she wasn’t expecting to win a gold medal.

“I was shocked,” Dumond said. “I didn’t expect to win it, because I was going against so many of these bigger schools and they have so many more resources than we do.”

Students from 27 Maine technical schools vied for medals in the state competition, including schools such as Lewiston, Presque Isle, Mid-Maine in Waterville and Mid-Coast in Rockland.

“I thought they were going to do way better than I did, because their medical terminology course is probably much more expanded,” she said. “So I was expecting to get like a bronze. So when they didn’t call my name for bronze, I was like disappointed.”

She was talking with a friend and not really paying attention to the announcers, “and all of a sudden they said, ‘The gold medalist from Region 9,’ and they all got up and were cheering me on, and I was walking to the stage almost crying, because I didn’t expect to do that well.”

She said her mother cried tears of joy on learning her daughter had won the gold medal. “My mom was really happy. She was crying. I almost wish she would have been there, because I would have loved to see the look on her face.”

For the medical terminology contest, competitors took a written test of 100 or so questions, Dumond said. It took her 30 minutes to complete it. She scored 930 points out of 1,000.

“I thought it was pretty easy,” she said. “It was most of the words that I had studied and I knew the course and I was like, ‘Yeah! I have this!’ But I still expected other people to get near perfect.”

Region 9 director Brenda Gammon said that in the past 15 years, only eight Region 9 students who competed at the SkillsUSA state championship won gold medals.

Region 9’s SkillsUSA advisers, Jenn and Pete Barlow, said 11 of the 15 students Region 9 sent to states this month won medals. “That’s a huge amount for us,” Jenn Barlow said.

“It’s probably the most we’ve had come back with medals,” Pete Barlow said. “They were competing with students from 27 different technology centers in the state, so to medal it means you were in the top three of 27 different schools. We have some really good students.”

Since the Barlows aren’t going to nationals, Dumond said her mother will travel with her as her adviser.

“I honestly didn’t think I was going to go, because I didn’t have the skills coming into this program and I wanted to sign up for skills, because I really wanted to be involved, but I didn’t think I was going to make it as far as nationals, coming from a small town,” she said. “I mean, not many kids come here, so it’s almost unrealistic to think that someone coming from a small school with few resources is able to make it that far.”

Mother and daughter are working on fundraiser ideas and Dumond is currently selling lollipops at Region 9. She also has a GoFundMe site at www.gofundme.com/o9oezw and had raised $335 by Wednesday evening. Dumond said fellow Region 9 students have offered to help her raise money for the trip.

The teenager is following in the path of her older sister, Casey Dumond, 19, who is attending the University of Maine to become a nurse.

“She actually took the CNA program here and she loved it,” Nikki Dumond said. “That’s part of the reason why I wanted to do it.”

She said her plan is to go to medical school and into the Air Force or some branch of the military as part of the Reserves. “I don’t want to go on active duty, but that might change.”

She said she wants to become a doctor because, “I just really like helping people.

“I feel that health care is a really good way to do that, because you’re dealing with all kinds of people with all kinds of different backgrounds with different types of diseases,” she said.

“I think it’s just rewarding to like be helping someone and to see that work pay off — whether it’s like a type of therapy like either physical or occupational — where you can see people walk again or see people try to regain skills that they didn’t have before. I just feel that’s rewarding.”

tkarkos@sunmediagroup.net

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