Family, Career and Community Leaders of America is a nonprofit national career and technical student organization for young men and women in Family and Consumer Sciences education. Schuyler Central High School students Vanessa Serrano and Melissa Escobar decided to compete together at the FCCLA District competition. Then they chose their topic, which was alcoholism. Serrano and Escobar saw a video about how alcohol affects the body in health class last semester, so they decided to research the topic and they found that it interested them.

According to Melissa Escobar, after choosing the topic, you have to do research to have a better understanding of the topic. Then you have to plan for your speech and visuals. For the District competition you make a file folder, which is proof that you presented to classrooms. For each category it is different and requires different things. State had be the same as for Districts. Something that Escobar would tell someone who wants to join FCCLA is that “FCCLA is a fun and interesting club” and she would advise them to join. “I hope this year we get new members, because we are planning to make this years’ FCCLA a lot more fun,” Escobar said.

At the State competition, the SCHS students competed against 3 other people. “I felt nervous, because I knew obviously there could only be one State champion and there was three other people who were competing against us. As they called the other two people to get plain silver, I knew it was between another girl and us. When they announced our names as State Runner Up, I was disappointed and happy at the same time. I wanted to get State Champ, but State is a lot more complex than Districts. I was relieved that we at least got State Runner Up, because our hard work paid off and that will motivate me more to do better next year and win State Champ,” according to Escobar.

According to Vanessa Serrano, the topic that they choose seemed like an interesting topic to write about. Something that Serrano would tell someone who wants to join FCCLA is that “it a fun organization, but there is a lot to be done.” “I’m glad that we placed, although we could have done better,” Serrano said.