FCCLA, or family, career and community leaders of America, is a club that allows students to develop projects based around Family and Consumer Sciences content areas.  Projects can be anything from planning and implementing a community service project, working with athletes and developing sports nutrition plans or developing lessons and activities for early childhood education to competing in professional job interviews. 

“With FCCLA, the sky’s the limit as to what members can do,” FACS teacher Jill Vieira said.

The Gibson Southern FCCLA chapter attended their state contest and conference March 5-7 at Horizon Convention Center, Muncie, IN. This year’s State Contest hosted over 50 chapters and 900 students from around the state.

Seven girls from Gibson Southern attended the conference, including Lexi Walker, Kylie Ginn, Blaire Rexing, Taylor Hart, Beth Weber, Kendall White and Kaitlyn Gentry. FACS teacher, Jill Vieira also attended the trip. 

“I started FCCLA two years ago and have been taking “baby steps” implementing programs and activities within our chapter,” Vieira said. “This year we elected officers and had a goal to take a group to state contest. We have also been working on a couple community service projects to complete this year yet. Now that we have a state contest under our belt, we are looking forward to next year to be even more competitive and set our sights on attending the National Contest!”

On Thursday, the girls got onto a bus and began their journey north. After a four hour bus ride, they arrived at their hotel and attended a general session. 

That was where Lexi Walker and Kylie Ginn did the parade of chapters. This is when each school has 2 or 3 representatives carrying their school banner. 

During the ceremony, Gibson Southern received awards including the 20 by 20, 50 by 50, vision award and third largest chapter in the state. A comedic speaker gave a moving and entertaining presentation about persistence and achieving goals. After this, the students headed back to the hotel.

The competition and presentations were held on Friday. Junior Lexi Walker gave a presentation about the benefits of veganism. Sophomore Taylor Hart and junior Blaire Rexing spoke about the importance of hydrations in the category of sports nutrition. Kylie Ginn presented to a panel of 4 judges about her experience teaching a lesson about space to preschoolers. Sophomores Beth Weber, Kendall White and Kaitlyn Gentry were in the category of early child development and spoke about the benefits of dairy on young children. 

There was another general session on Friday where awards were given to state exhibits. After this, students changed and headed to the dance which was hosted at the convention center that was connected to the hotel. 

“I really enjoyed the dance,” Walker said. “There was a cotton candy machine, glow in the dark minigolf and glow in the dark dodgeball.”  

On Saturday, awards for star events were presented, which is the competitions that Gibson Southern competed in. Every student received a bronze medal, except for Kylie Ginn, who received a silver medal. Officers gave farewell speeches and new officers were elected. No Titans ran for a state officer position. 

About 1pm, the students loaded onto the buses and drove home with their awards in hand. Some students and Vieria plan on attending the convention again next year.