By: Holden Sutter –
On February 1 and 3, Southeast’s FBLA team went to business competitions at UNL and UNO respectively. These competitions, especially the one at UNL, proved to be successful for the team with multiple people winning awards.
To understand these competitions, we must first know what FBLA does. Alex Rownd (12) is the president of Southeast’s chapter and has been with the group since his junior year.
“We do various different kinds of things in FBLA,” said Rownd. “Among these include different community service or fundraising activities, attending leadership conferences, and competing in business competitions.We always do rose sales around Valentine’s day and we also host blood drives at the school as well.”
Reese Banks is another member of the FBLA team and has been on the team since he first came to Southeast three years ago. Having been to several competitions, he knows exactly what to expect from these events.
“We have our team events which you can compete in with a partner and it requires a presentation to a group of judges,” said Banks. “If public speaking or group work isn’t what you feel comfortable doing we also have Objective Tests which are 100 question tests that you have 60 minutes to complete. These tests can range anywhere from Accounting to Technology related events so you don’t have to know a lot about business to find a test for you.”
Banks has a positive outlook on how these competitions at UNL and UNO went for both him and his team as a whole.
“We had a lot of success at UNL. Several of our members placed but we always have room to improve,” Banks said. “The competition at these 2 events is always very high because there is not much of a variety of different tests that you can take. Our most diverse competition is our State Leadership Conference. At UNO we were limited to 9 options of events and could only compete in 3 where at SLC we have 30+.”
Normal competitions are wrapping up for the team for this season. In addition to that, they just finished up their yearly rose sales for Valentine’s Day. This doesn’t mean that the team is done for the year though.
“We are now going to be focusing on getting ready for the state competition coming up in a while,” said Rownd. “We have plenty of time before this, so we will definitely be using it in order to study up and get as prepared as possible to compete.
