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Friday morning twenty-five students involved in First Port City’s Youth Leadership Program took part in the annual Amazing Shake Competition, hosted in partnership with the Bainbridge-Decatur County Chamber of Commerce.

The Amazing Shake is a fast-paced series of creative and unique scenarios to challenge the students involved in the Youth Leadership Program. It transforms their experience into a giant obstacle course, where each station is a creative challenge that engages students in the use of communication and soft skills.

The station places one professional from the local community as the judge. The students go through each station one at a time, spending one-minute interacting with the professional. During that time, the professional judges the student on qualities such as handshake firmness, eye contact, confidence and common sense on a sliding scale of 1-10.

Professionals use a rubric to score each student based on their interaction after the 60 seconds is up. At the conclusion of all the rounds, the overall score for each student will be calculated and the student with the highest overall points earned will be named the Amazing Shake winner at the graduation ceremony on Sunday evening. In the event of a tie, there will be a tie breaker round held.

At each station, professionals assumed the role of the expert and used their professional knowledge and experience to interact with the student.

Examples of stations include the Farm Credit station with Paxton Pointevint, where students assumed the role of an employee in the company who wanted a raise.

Pointevint was instructed to ask each student “Can you give me a reason why you think you deserve to be paid more by our company.”

In this scenario, students had to think on their feet of what their skillset was and why their skillset deserved to be compensated more than other students’ skillsets.

Superintendent Tim Cochran was in charge of the disgruntled parent scenario, which most students agreed was the hardest.

Cochran was tasked with playing the role of an upset parent about the current vaping policy and students had to assume the role of Superintendent and respond to the parent’s concerns and frustrations accordingly.

A scenario that students seemed to like was one put on by Alesia Brinson titled Bedside Manner.

Brinson acted as a patient who was unhappy with their experience and how long it took the doctor to get to them. The students were given a white coat and were tasked with handling the situation with patience and understanding.

Brinson applauded the students and said almost everyone who came to her station had a reasonable explanation for them running late, rather it be COVID-19 or emergency surgery.

They did an excellent job on their feet, she lauded.

Other students enjoyed the Final Arrangements scenario, where they were asked to meet with someone who has just lost a loved one. The students were then judged on how they interacted with individuals who are grieving.

Overall, students told directors they learned a lot and the various scenarios did open potential career ideas they never knew they might be interested in.

Chamber President Lauren Minor thanked all volunteers for their time in helping the youth leadership group before the competition ended with a group picture.