News Highlights

Howard Lake girls win FFA foods competition at MSU

2006-04-09

By Amanda Dyslin, Free Press Staff Writer [published in The Free Press, Mankato, MN]

Photo by John Cross

From left, Stacie Ausen, Amanda Goettle, Tracy Callahan and Rebecca Goettle participate in a sensory test for food qualities such as freshness and aroma in the annual Food Science and Technology Career Development event of the FFA.

Jackie Koch and the rest of her FFA team received another pleasant surprise this year, even bigger than last year's.

"First place?!" Koch said, standing to hug her three other Howard Lake-Waverly-Winsted teammates and coach Friday afternoon in Minnesota State University's CSU Ballroom. And this year - the second year the school district participated in the Food Science and Technology Career Development competition - the girls were even more surprised than their coach.

"Last year I told them, 'Just be happy if you don't get last place,'" said coach Jim Weninger just before the team shocked him by earning fourth out of 19 teams. Sure, it was the girls' first year competing and Weninger just wanted to save them some disappointment, but he admits his lack of faith was misguided.

He wasn't about to make the same mistake this year, arriving to the event with confidence that his girls would place at least in the top five out of 14 southern Minnesota teams. Still, after a full day of engaging with dozens of able competitors, first place was quite an honor for Weninger, Koch, a senior, and sophomores Brittany Cardinal, Hope Horstmann and Ali Fitzpatrick.

Because this year's competition was tough.

The food science competition requires teams to exercise skills from all components of food production and is quite comprehensive, said Max Pecht, competition judge and Hormel Foods research administrator. The girls knew before they arrived at MSU's Wiecking Center Friday morning they'd have to complete a written test, respond to an industry complaint letter, take a food-safety photo identification test, and sensory test for food freshness and aroma.

But the curve ball of the competition, the event they knew was most important, is what caused the stress when they realized their preparation was all for naught, Koch said. Two months ago the girls were told they'd have to make some kind of low-carb wrap sandwich but weren't told the ingredients that would be available to them.

The idea was for them to create a new kind of sandwich on the fly, analyze its nutritional value, price it, market it and present it to a panel of judges. They had one hour to get the job done, so the girls knew preparation was key.

The team surveyed 100 residents and found the ranch wrap to be most popular, so that's the one they planned for and studied online. When they got to the competition - no ranch dressing.

"We had to change everything," Cardinal said.

Amid the commotion, though, Koch said, the award-winning Italian wrap was born: a spinach tortilla filled with roast beef, Swiss cheese, red peppers, onions, tomatoes and honey mustard. According to Pecht, the girls' marketing of the wrap clinched the win.

"Fitz Foods keeps you fit," was the slogan the girls said together at the end of a 20-second commercial they wrote and performed to market their wrap. Their company name, Fitz Foods, came to them easily, Koch said - they just used the first part of Fitzpatrick's last name. And the slogan came from that.

Sounds simple enough, the girls said, but it's catchy. And, after taking first at Friday's state competition, their little slogan earned them a shot at the national FFA food science competition in Louisville, Ky., later this year.

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