Among the clubs at Central Methodist University (CMU), there's a team of young women that isn't afraid of getting its hands dirty, albeit in a "fake" way.

At practice, the team is presented with the following situation: There's been a crime at CMU. There's marijuana, cocaine, bullet holes and blood.

"We received a 911 call, we were dispatched and we have the crime scene investigation team: Stacy Pierson, Jennifer Hill and Kaitlin Rundel," said Terri Haach, an assistant professor of Criminal Justice at CMU.

Ok, so the "blood" is paint and the "drugs" are flour, but these women take their job very seriously. They are part of CMU's Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) Team and this crime exercise is nothing new to them. They investigate the pretend crimes as thoroughly as if they were real, lifting fingerprints from evidence, running DNA analyses and identifying suspects.

"And you take a look around see what happened and then you start collecting evidence," CSI team member Stacy Pierson said.

Team members know exactly what to do as soon as they walk in.

"You have to secure the crime scene, you have to make an entry log of who goes in the crime scene," CSI team member Jennifer Hill said.

Some might wonder why these women spend so much time working with dummies. But practice makes perfect with this team.

"We're taught here that you need to think outside the box what the motive behind all of this," Hill said.

It pays off, last month the team competed in the National American Criminal Justice Crime Scene Investigation Contest.

"They had laid out a paper outline of a body and they had five or six things of evidence," Hill said.

Clearly these women were prepared to do well, but how well? Even the team, a team that can crack a crime in under an hour wasn't ready for what happened next.

"Stacy called me basically screaming along with her mom screaming, 'Congratulations!'" CSI team member Kaitlin Rundel said. "I was like, 'What? I don't even know what we did!' and Stacey was like, 'We won!' I just started laughing. I was like, 'First time ever, and we actually won? Are you serious?'"

There's a first time for everything and these women experienced that first hand beating out more than 130 other universities.

"We weren't expecting to win, we just wanted to go and get some experience and we got that and more and I thank God for it," Hill said.

"Coming from a really small school, who would think we'd go and win first place in nationals?" Pierson said.

It just goes to show playing with toys and dolls can really pay off.

CMU is offering a four-day CSI camp in June for high school students to get some hands on experience in the criminal justice world. You can print an application for the CSI @ CMU summer camp by clicking the link on the left.