Several Greene County High School students recently competed at a national contest.

The Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) National Leadership Conference was held earlier this month in Denver, Colorado and five students achieved high marks. FCCLA Advisor Ashley Havens says the food innovation team of Hailey Carman, and Emma and Ella Shipley earned a gold award, while Brooke Williams and Maggie Mikkelsen each received a silver award for “Say Yes to FCS” and a sustainability challenge, respectively.

Carman talks about why she chose to do food innovations, where they had to make cookies with a limited amount of sugar.

“I chose to do food innovations again this year because I had a lot of fun last year doing it with my friends and also we did pretty good last year and I wanted to do it again this year and see if we could get better at it. I enjoyed baking the cookies with my friends a lot and just getting to spend time with them working on our project.”

Havens notes the gold means that the students scored at least 90 points out of a possible 100 points and silver signifies a score of between 80 to 89 points out of 100. She adds that while no one placed in the top ten nationally, she felt that being at the national conference gave the girls experiences that will help them grow into their leadership roles and improve their public speaking skills.