By Caitlin Kelly
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Four MHS students made the cut at the Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) Hawaii state conference and continued on to the national conference in Anaheim, CA from July 10 to 14. Senior Rachael Ryan earned a gold medal in the Career Investigation category and the team of Alumni Erika Edwards, Travis Shimizu and Junior Malina Reyes came home with a bronze medal in Culinary Arts.

“The whole point of FCCLA is the ultimate leadership experience, that’s what they promote FCCLA about. So the students do workshops and they meet a lot of other people,” said FCCLA Adviser Karla Deguchi. Over 20 categories of competition gave participants the chance to showcase their leadership skills and knowledge acquired through participation in the club.

Students in Career Investigation researched a career and tied it back to family and consumer sciences; Ryan conducted her project on teaching. “I’ve done a lot of teaching in the past years I’ve been living here,” said Ryan, continuing, “Also my mom is a teacher so it would be easier for me to find information on it and I was interested in it because I really love working with kids.”

Ryan was the first student to receive a gold medal at the national level since Deguchi has been FCCLA adviser. “I was like oh my gosh I was flipping out. It felt really good to have gotten gold,” said Ryan.

On the other side of the arena, Edwards, Reyes and Shimizu were responsible for creating three dishes using proper food service techniques and equipment in the Culinary Arts competition. “We did a beef kabob and chipotle mashed potatoes with mousse cups. So like we were each in charge of our own dish but we helped each other on most of it,” Reyes explained.

The trio received the rare opportunity to attend the conference together, as team members are typically from different schools. “At states technically we compete individually so we can win individually, so we don’t actually have to win as a team,” Reyes explained. Having familiar people on the team added to the group’s performance. “It was really good that we got that teamwork and we had that chemistry,” she said.

Participants felt that the competition aspect of the conference helped them to go beyond their comfort zones. “I don’t really like competing and I’ve never really competed before this so I learned how many people I can meet with competing,” said Ryan.

Reyes agreed saying, “I’ve never played a sport in my life so that was like my sport because I was on a team and I had a coach and we practiced all the time. So I took that responsibility and that commitment aspect,” said Reyes.

FCCLA members continue to prepare for this year’s state competition and hope to receive the chance to compete on the national level again.