And then there were three.

Cohen Beattie, Mariah Fish and Olivia Spurgeon will be the Montgomery County High School’s representatives in FCCLA (Family, Career and Community Leaders of America) state competition after earning top gold honors at the Regional 4 STAR (Students Taking Action with Recognition) Events program on Jan. 27 at Mark Twain High School. The state competition is scheduled for March 16-18 at the Margaritaville Lake Resort in Osage Beach.

The top two gold medal winners in regional competition advance to state competition and have a chance to qualify for national competition, which is scheduled for July in Orlando, Fla.

Fish, a sophomore, earned top gold honors after presenting her community youth reading program called the FCCLA Reading Challenge. The three-month event, which started on Jan. 9, is for any student from kindergarten through sixth grade in Montgomery City and Jonesburg elementary schools. All participants are challenged to read 2,000 minutes and will win prizes if they log in their work in the Reader Zone app, which was paid for by the MCHS FCCLA chapter. It’s the second year in a row Fish is hosting the competition.

“It takes a lot of time to plan,” Fish said. “You have to think of all of the alternatives and how they will be received. There are different things you have to think about. For instance, this time we’re going through an app, whereas last year, when I did my reading competition, we went through Google Sheets. Now, we’re going through an app. So I had to go find an app and ask people for help finding apps. I don’t track my reading like that. Little stuff like that with a lot of attention to detail is very important for this.”

Fish, who is the MCHS FCCLA chapter president, was also elected FCCLA regional president during the regional competition, replacing Spurgeon, who was chosen president in last year’s regional competition at MCHS.

Last year, Fish received a national gold award and earned a fifth-place finish at the FCCLA National Leadership Conference in Seattle for her reading challenge.

Spurgeon, also a sophomore, earned a state berth after making a presentation about the importance of positive communication in her project with her cross country team. She competed in cross country with the Wildcats the last two years and earned all-Eastern Missouri Conference honors both years.

Spurgeon was also elected regional state officer and plans to meet other state officers in the first official meeting at the state conference. The region includes Montgomery, Ralls, Pike, St. Charles, Lincoln, Warren, Callaway, Audrain and Boone counties.

Beattie, a freshman, scored a 100 percent in his professional presentation about the amount of sugar in each person’s diets to clinch a state berth. Last year, as an eighth-grader at Montgomery County Middle School, Beattie earned a national gold award for his $10 Meals Challenge project. He finished third in nationals and second at state.

Beattie and Fish were two of eight students from the R-II School District to earn medals at FCCLA nationals in 2024.