Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) will compete in state competitions March 31 at the Dallas Hilton Anatole. The five different competitive teams that advanced at regionals four weeks ago were fashion design, job interview, nutrition and wellness, sports nutrition and sustainability challenge.

Senior Hiba Virani is one of the students competing in sports nutrition, alongside her competition partners Ella Zou and Liana Manochahri, creating a meal-plan and wellness tracker for football players to keep their body energized properly as athletes. The group placed fourth at regionals.

“For our project, we are basically focusing on football and what a football player needs to do to maintain a healthy weight goal,” Virani said. “We made a whole nutritional plan [and a] fake person and built it on a mannequin and gave it characteristics. We [also] interviewed coaches in football [like] coach [Austin] Luna [and exchanged] emails back and forth with coach [Raymond] Williams.”

Each competition is open for members at the beginning of the year to choose as their year’s contest to compete in. Students cannot compete in the same competition again in the future. FCCLA sponsor Jamie Leonard holds “Wednesday Workdays” after school in her classroom for competitors to go over their projects and practice with her and co-sponsors, counseling and mental health teacher Jacqueline Rans and child development teacher Meredith Perkins, before their competitions. As the event  approaches, Leonard said she is confident in her students advancing to nationals. 

“At state, they take the top two from each competition and [send them] to Denver for nationals on the weekend of [the] Fourth of July,” Leonard said. “I have an underclassman [named] Eyesha Sadiq who competed in [the] job interview [competition] and got first place. She has a really good chance at advancing to nationals.” 

Leonard became the club’s sponsor last year during her first year at Hebron. The club was initially started by Rans, and Leonard only wishes to “follow in her footsteps” while leading the club.

“We do volunteer work and a lot of stuff on just learning how to be a better human,” Leonard said. “FCCLA prides itself on being the only organization with family as its focus, regardless of what your family makeup looks like. We try to be sure that you can be the best contributor possible to that.”

As members prepare for their respective competitions tomorrow, Zou said she feels prepared for what is to come once competition day arrives.

“We are [now] competing with about 20 other teams in state,” Zou said. “We have meetings after school, during spring break and outside of school to do the project and prep. I hope we can make it to nationals.”