Sierra Vista’s FCCLA Chapter Dares to Dream at the State Conference

From March 11 through the 14th, Sierra Vista High School’s Family Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) chapter attended the Nevada State Conference. With 28 students in attendance, all competing in various PEP (specific to Nevada) events and STAR (national) events, ten students qualified for nationals in Orlando, Florida this summer.
Overall, the conference went “really well,” says Dylan Hinkle, the Sierra Vista FCCLA advisor. Hinkle elaborates, “I feel like we did really well and I’m very proud of everybody… We had a very good showing… and I’m very proud.” Kenzie Gidge (11) shares her experience, “I think the conference went good. We had lots of fun and learned a lot from our competitions. We also had free time after presentations to explore the hotel and hang out with friends and bond with the whole club.” On top of all of this success, Hinkle aims to improve the club even more next year. His main goals involve, “trying to have more school spirit through trying to do more school gear and working to bond the club even more.”
Many months of preparation went into their success. Jocelynn Coreas (12), the Vice President of Community Service, competed in the PEP event, chapter t-shirt competition. Corease reveals how she prepared for the competition, “I prepared for it by making a design on canvas and then transferring the design to something on the cricut website form. From there I created the shirt… and made sure I was ready by hanging my shirt and writing my paper for it.” Additionally, Gidge competed in the STAR event, interpersonal communication. To prepare, Gidge shares, “me and my partner Marianna Balondo, started making our presentation and preparing a month in advance. Our project was about special education in schools, specifically the best buddies program, so we interviewed the best buddies president at SVHS and attended lunch with a buddy to gather information to present.” Gidge and Balondo were two of many to qualify for nationals.
With so many students qualifying for nationals the club began preparing right away. Hinkle shares, “right now it’s a lot of fundraising because we need to raise about 5,000 dollars for two students to go. Right now we’re throwing around ideas to ensure every student who wants to go gets the opportunity to go.” In order to reach this goal, the club began selling coffee. In order to make more money Hinkle began “extending this offer to teachers as well.” Hinkle plans to keep selling coffee while still brainstorming more fundraising ideas such as selling cake pops.
Thinking of the future, Hinkle commemorates the seniors who are in FCCLA and attended the conference. “A lot of our club members are seniors and it’s their last year. We’re losing about twenty seniors so it was really good for all of our seniors to get to know each other and the other members bonded a lot for next year.” One of these seniors, Coreas, reveals her experience within FCCLA. “The club helped me through high school. It allowed me to get closer with different people and even helped the school through volunteer work such as helping create the Student of the Month Breakfast.”