Participation in Family, Career, Community Leaders of America has been in flux over the last few years at the school level, let alone the district and state level. That is, until this year when the roster saw a large jump in numbers and Manhattan High became home to its first District Officer in three years.

Whitley Coke, junior, has been a member for two years and after support from the adviser, Heide Rippert, she decided to run for a District Officer position.

After being elected into the position, other subroles are assigned to each district officer. Coke was assigned to be the Vice President of Finance for District D.

“Her job will be basically that she has the checkbook for the [FCCLA] district,” Rippert said, “so she will basically be in charge of all incoming and outgoing money for the entire district so when one of the schools register for Fall Leadership Conference, so she has to make an account for all of that money going into the district account and any bills that need to be paid, she has to pay out.”

The drive that led her to run for the position, however, did not come without last-minute doubt and nerves.

“The morning of, she was ready to not go,” Rippert said. “She thought her speech was terrible and the process changed quite a bit this year and she didn’t feel ready for it…it was all a new process and Whitley was fearing the process. She felt like she wrote her speech last minute and did some of that stuff last minute. She came through and did a really nice job with doing her speech and she ended it with comparing FCCLA to a pizza.”

Coke attributed her ability and motivation to run for the office to the support received from Rippert.

“She’s an amazing teacher and I love her so much,” Coke said. “She’s the reason I got so involved in FCCLA. The motivation from [Rippert]…made me believe that I could achieve anything I put my mind to.”