4-H LifeSmarts is the ultimate consumer challenge for 4-Her’s in 6^th-12^th grades. Like academic style competition, team members are quizzed in topics of technology, consumer rights, health and safety, environment, and finance. Harrison County’s 4-H Varsity team competed in the 2024 state competition (online contest) in January. As the highest placing varsity team in the state, Harrison County was honored to represent Kentucky at the National LifeSmarts competition held in San Diego, CA. Our team members consisted of Ella Yazell (team captain), Sutton Koch, Molly Coleman, Harrison Hatter, Delaney Koch (Assistant Coach), and Shannon Farrell (Coach). For the 3 months leading up to the national competition, team members met to practice, do the online assessment portion of the contest, create their roll call video, and develop a TikTok on over-the-counter drugs for the TikTok competition. Their video was also used as the grand finale of an OTC drug presentation that the team developed and delivered to two community groups as a submission for a travel stipend that was awarded to the team! Upon arrival to the live portion of the contest held in San Diego, our team met their sister teams (from Pennsylvania and Wisconsin). The first challenge – the sister team challenge – was extremely successful, landing our trio of states as a #1 seed for the buzzer rounds of competition. After the speed smarts and buzzer round competitions, Kentucky placed 26^th overall in the National contest. We are Kentucky had one of the youngest teams in the contest and learned so much to prepare to compete again in 2025. Outside of competition, the team enjoyed some incredible site seeing in California including sea lions at La Jolla Cove, the Hotel del Coronado, and Mission Beach Board Walk. Funds from the KY 4-H Foundation helped cover our airline tickets, Uber receipts, and hotel expenses.The remaining expenses were covered by the Harrison County 4-H Council.

Kentucky introduced the first ever 4-H FCS quiz bowl during the KY State Fair, 2024. The packet of information to study for this newly implemented state contest proved to have a lot of overlap with LifeSmarts materials. As a result, the five 4-H LifeSmarts team members who traveled to San Diego, plus a recruited 4 more 4-Hers studied and attended the state 4-H FCS quiz bowl. Winning that competition, the highest-ranking team members will get to travel to the National 4-H FCS quiz bowl competition in January 2025 held in San Antonio, TX. A couple of the alternates were also offered, and plan to attend this national competition to compete in the National 4-H FCS skillathon.