It was a flawless performance by a Swift Current Comprehensive High School student on the national stage last week in Manitoba.

Autumn Coates won a gold medal in IT - Office Software Applications and also won the RBC Regional Excellence Award at Skills Canada on Saturday.

The grade 12 student was shocked to hear her name called for the gold medal in her specialized category.

"Someone had to push me up there because I didn't think it was going to happen," she said. "There was only four of us [in IT] so I was expecting fourth or third. Once they announced the bronze and silver, I assumed [gold] wasn't going to be me so I stopped listening, so I didn't really know what happened."

Coates was given seven and a half hours across Thursday and Friday to create files for a fake company without Wi-Fi or the help tab in Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.

"It was hard to tell how well the other competitors were doing," she said. "During the competition, I actually thought I wasn't doing great, but I really had no way of telling."

The RBC award was given to the Saskatchewan student with the highest mark and included a $1,500 scholarship. Coates' mark rose above more than 50 other competitors from the province for her second big win.

She is enrolled at the Eward School of Business at the University of Saskatchewan for business this fall and has aspirations of going into accounting.

"It will look great on a resume," she said. "Just practicing this, it's a great skill to have in any job and any schooling I may go into in the future."

Three other students from the Swift Current Comprehensive High School attended Skills Canada in Winnipeg. Joe Boss and Jacob Hancock competed as a team in 3D character animation and Skyler Harding in car painting. They all just missed podium finishes.

"Sometimes the difference between first and fourth place is maybe a point or two," Mark Kroeker, a construction and drafting teacher at the Swift Current Comprehensive High School, said. "They worked really hard and represented our city, school, and province with a lot of distinction and pride and it was really great to watch."