COMMERCE CITY, Colo. — Students from the Adams City High School Culinary Class recently took the top prize in a statewide contest against about 400 other high school students.
The competition was part of a program called ProStart, a non-profit that gives students education in restaurant management and the culinary arts.
“It’s basically an advanced culinary class,” said senior Alayzha Gutierrez. “It’s not necessarily about cooking and baking, but about the whole field of hospitality and tourism.”
Gutierrez is interested in a career in hospitality and took the class to get a jump on her career.
“I’ve always loved cooking and baking but this was more for a push to do something different,” she said.
“They start with no knowledge at all in their very first year,” said Culinary Arts Instructor Chef Ellen Heumann. “Many of them never having stepped foot into a professional kitchen.”
It’s a step that recently put her students in the ProStart Invitational contest. They competed against other schools in the state for scholarship opportunities to culinary schools like Johnson & Wales University.
“We’re certainly proud of these students,” said Culinary Arts instructor Chef Jessica Dilullo. “They’ve come in at 5 a.m. for about two months every morning and they’ve worked every Saturday in order to prepare for this competition.”
“I cried, everybody cried,” Gutierrez said. “We always hoped we would win (but) didn't know we would win."
Each student walked away with $29,000 in scholarship money from the competition, according to the school.
“They were able to bring home collectively a little over a quarter million dollars in scholarships,” Heumann said. “That is huge and life-changing for these students.”
Adams City High School will go on to represent Colorado in Washington D.C., where they will compete against other culinary programs from across the country.
“It was our first time doing something like this, and we just accomplished something so big that we didn’t expect,” said Gutierrez.
“We went from knowing nothing a year and a half ago to these students excelling to the point of now going to the national competition in May,” said Heumann.
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