Nicole Johnston of Bellaire, a welding student at Belmont Career Center, looks over the trophies she and her fellow students have made. Each trophy will be given to a winner of the upcoming Staying Clean Car, Bike and Truck Show this September.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Winners of the third annual Staying Clean Car, Bike and Truck Show will take some unique and striking trophies home, thanks to the welding students at Belmont Career Center who are crafting the prizes from used car parts.

On Wednesday, the students presented some of their finished products to members of the Classy Chassis Car Club and to Belmont County Common Pleas Judge Frank Fregiato and Clerk of Courts Cynthia Fregiato, all of whom help to organize the event. Career Center Superintendent Richard Schoene said about 30 students have participated in making the trophies, with some making multiple awards. Each trophy will have a wooden base, courtesy of the center’s woodshop classes.

“We are having our third annual car show to raise funds to put in the grade schools of Belmont County, Ohio, drug-free programs to so saturate, inundate our students, our children, that by the time they reach high school … there’s no drug decision to be made,” Fregiato said, adding that the event has raised thousands of dollars for local schools’ drug-free programs. “What we’ve got here is to integrate our local schools into our car show, and part of the community.”

There will be 55 trophies in all by the time of the car show in September, with each going to a prize-winning car.

“These are much nicer than we ever dreamed they’d be. They met and well exceeded our expectations,” Fregiato said of the trophies.

“They have done an excellent job,” Jim McCraw of the Classy Chassis Car Club added.

Several students spoke about the process of crafting the pieces.

Devynn Edwards of Bellaire High School, a senior studying at the career center, described taking parts from a diesel engine to create a trophy.

“You basically use your own creativity to imagine what pieces would go together with what pieces. I used my skills that I learned from lathe machining and made sure it looked polished and put together,” she said.

“It’s really fun and absolutely really pretty welding, especially if you know how to do it,” Nicole Johnston of Bellaire schools, another senior, said, adding that she learned welding from an early age from her father, Rick Johnston, a mechanic. “Since I was little, my dad would work on hay feeders with my family friends, and it was fascinating when I was little.”

Both girls are drug-free club members. They said they welcomed the chance to promote the car show and to encourage healthy activities. They said the widespread drug epidemic has impacted many in the region.

“It is a bit of motivation, because … I’ve seen family and friends turn into somebody that you don’t even recognize anymore because they are so involved in the drug industry. It’s good to grow up with a program like this,” Johnston said.

“We had 400 and some cars last year, so we’re hoping for even more than that this year,” McCraw said, adding that the event will be held in front of the Sears storefront at the Ohio Valley Mall.

For more information, call McCraw at 440-371-5580.