Statewide competition yields numerous awards
Hana King | Staff Writer
kinghm@imail.losrios.edu
The City College Cosmetology department has a lot to celebrate after four cosmetology students took home more than half of the awards in categories for hair, makeup, modeling and nails at a statewide competition.
“It’s not unusual for our school to win something,”
Cosmetology Department chair Marcia Bonawitz said. “But this year we won almost every award.”
The winning City College students at the California Cosmetology Association-sponsored Global Hair and Beauty Expo were Preston Phu Tran, who won Best of Show for makeup and first place overall for makeup, Kimyen Tran, who won Best of Show for hair and first place overall for hair, True Vue, who won first place overall for nails, and Hiroko Kuboki, who won first place overall in the model category.
The expo takes place once every year. This year, 12 colleges, both public and private, competed. There were 29 teams present and four people to a team. None of the winning City College students had competed before, but all said they compensated for their rookie status by sacrificing a lot of free time to prepare for the event.
“There are some schools that really come out to compete,” cosmetology professor Fran Handy said. “The time that our students spent preparing for this competition is probably double what others spent because our students have other classes and go to school full time.”
The students’ success is especially timely considering that each of the four students is just one semester away from earning their cosmetology certificates.
“Professionals go to the competition to scout out students,” Handy said.
Handy is the winning students’ instructor and has been teaching in the Cosmetology Department for more than 5 years.
The winning students credit their success, not only to hard work, but also to their instructors.
“I think our instructors were really supportive,” Vue said. “They helped us so much.”
Vue has been at City College for a year and a half and said she hopes to find a chair in a salon after earning her certificate and cosmetology license.
Despite City College’s winning reputation, the students were taken aback when they learned of their victories.
“I cried,” Tran said. “I was just really shocked.”
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