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Tristan Coates will travel the world, training in niche skills in order to represent the USA on a global scale in international competition. But he won’t be throwing a javelin, slalom skiing or doing a floor routine.
He will be competing in carpentry.
In 2022, at age 18, Coates won national gold at the SkillsUSA competition, a showcase for young trade professionals. Four years later, he got the call join a team of nine young competitors — who will represent the US in other skills such as auto mechanics and welding — for WorldSkills 2026 in Shanghai, scheduled for September. Before the invitation, he had never left the country.
Now 22, Coates owns and operates his own business, Coates Builder Improvements, in Jacksonville, Florida.
Here, Coates talks to Construction Dive about training to represent his country and running a company at a young age.
Editor’s Note: The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Construction Immersion: You are 22 years old. You are some kind of international athlete and you own your own business. How did you get here?
TRISTAN COATES: I had a family friend who got me involved. He saw something in me when I was young and pushed me into the trades. He was a contractor himself. He took me under his wing during the summers. I started mowing lawns when I was about 10 years old. I mowed lawns for about 10 years, about 30 meters a month, just like my own gig.
I took it to the construction side. And here we are today, framing to finish construction, general construction. We just built two garages from the ground up with in-law suites. I am fine with details, from design to finish. I have a vision of building from blueprints, whatever it is, and putting it into the real world.
In 2022 you won the SkillsUSA woodworking competition. How did this come about?
In fact, I didn’t even want to compete myself. My welding teacher at the A. Philip Randolph Academy here in Jax—he wasn’t even my woodworking teacher—saw something in me. He said, “Man, you need to join SkillsUSA, you need to compete.”
I already had my business up and running because I officially started Coates Builders at 18 years old. It was just one of those things that I really didn’t want to do, but he pushed me and I ended up winning districts, state and nationals.
Districts was just a basic wall mock-up: a small window, a four-foot wall, and an angle. The state was more of a double-edged sword, a bit of a lining. The nationals were more complex: a hunting roof, metal studs, a window, a cover and then some stairs. The worlds will be much more complicated, obviously.
What will global competition entail? What is your goal?
Obviously we’ll do our best at least for the site. It will certainly be a challenge, because our carpentry here is not like there. It’s called “stereotomy” and it’s old world. It is a carpentry that often begins on a drawing board. Everything is drawn on paper and laid out with millions of lines. We’re talking like crazy angles. And it’s all in metric, so it’s a challenge.
But I think the biggest challenge is time, training. Because again, it’s very different from what we do here. We are going to be challenged.
Were you planning to travel to Shanghai when it started?
It’s wild, man. It’s been a pretty crazy ride so far. Really busy to say the least. I didn’t even know what I was getting myself into. The most important thing is that when I do something, I give it my all. And so I ended up taking it to the top, man, all the way.
It had been four years since I heard from my accompanying expert, who is also the head judge who calls the Atlanta Carpentry Contest. He called me out of nowhere. And he said, “I need a competitor.” I said, “Why not?”
I haven’t traveled much. So, I’m definitely looking forward to that. I haven’t been to another country, although I’m going to Canada soon to train with a Swiss carpenter who won the contest a couple of years ago.
You have a unique perspective both as a young person and as an entrepreneur. What is your advice to others pursuing a career in construction?
The most important thing here is your body, right? You see all these big guys, and they’ve been beaten.
Then there is the money. The body and the money. I think for the younger guys, it’s important to figure out, “how can I get to the top,” but not “how fast can I get to the top?” More like “How do I get to the top right? And how do I spend time when I’m young so I can get to the top when there are guys here who are older and still don’t know what’s going on?”
When it comes to upward mobility and advancing our career, we have everything at our fingertips these days, so there’s no excuse that you don’t know something, you can’t figure something out. And so I think that’s good.
