The competition’s teams were each assigned a judge to observe and score them for “organization, sanitation, and teamwork” during meal production.

Noting the seemingly effortless way the chefs on the Virginia Tech-San Diego State team worked together, the team’s judge enquired whether they had collaborated before — “we made it look so easy,” Sexton recalls.

His team was indeed “very well organized and very professional,” Sexton said, but in fact “we had never worked together, and we never even met the team member from San Diego until the evening before.”

How did the team get assembled? Sexton said he knew Bratton, who was putting a team together for the competition and invited him to join him and Badger, whom Sexton also knew. San Diego State’s Glebus joined the team only when he arrived at the conference. “He wanted to compete,” Sexton said, “and we had only three members, so the organizers assigned him to our team.”

“We were elated to win the competition and very proud to represent Virginia Tech,” said Bratton.