FCCLA members Katelyn Yoder, Emma Benesek and Audrey Chambers took gold in the category of food innovations and finished first out of 18 other teams March 16-19 at Tan-Tar-A Resort in Osage Beach, which advanced them to the national conference held June 30-July 4 in Anaheim, California. Their project included creating an original recipe, hosting focus groups, refining the product, calculating nutritional value, producing packaging prototypes and calculating profit margins in which they created a presentation board and 10 minute speech for judges.

The group won a trophy, certificates and should they chose to use it $16,000 scholarships each to Sullivan University in Louisville, Kentucky.

“We were kind of freaking out,” Yoder said. “It was weird we didn’t hear it being announced because we were talking backstage. We didn’t know we made it so we talked to our advisors and we found out. Our advisors were also freaking out.”

Mrs. Pizzo and Mrs. McFadden advised the students at the conference, which was held on March 16 at Tan-Tar-A resort in Osage Beach. More than 14,000 middle and high school students from across the state attended the conference which featured speakers, workshops and competitions for FCCLA members.

“This is a tremendous accomplishment, and Sandy (Pizzo) and I are extremely proud of them,” Mrs. McFadden said.

The students were challenged with the task of coming up with an indulgent dessert and decided to make the ultimate breakup dessert. The team made “breakup balls” which were cream cheese icing surrounded by chocolate chip cookie dough and covered in dark chocolate.

“We had a lot of creative things in our presentation. In the beginning, we had a jingle and skit.

We had a costume design and we had a color theme which was black and gold,” Chambers said.

The group knew their project was good, but they never expected to win and make it to nationals.

Two months of planning and hard work went into the project, which undoubtedly paid off.