Paschal has a club called The Future Business Leaders of America and many of its participants recently competed in the state competition. Last December, many students competed at area and placed. The top three in each category were able to go to state. My sister and I won first place in our category, so we were able to go to state. 

Early Sunday morning, I had to have all of my luggage packed for the trip. That included the business clothing that I made sure to bring to fit the organization’s dress code. We had two charter buses to go on the trip, which was about a two and a half hour drive. We were staying at a resort in Round Rock, Texas, called Kalahari Resorts & Conventions. The resort had a safari theme and is America’s largest indoor waterpark resort. 

Before we competed, we got to explore around the resort and see all of the gift shops and restaurants along with the other attractions. We got $134 to spend on food. I wasn’t going to spend that much money on food, so I had lots of money left over. We had an opening ceremony later that night where we had to get dressed in our business attire. 

Early the next morning, the competition started and students were assigned a time to compete. Some were earlier and some were a bit later. Then they took the top scores to compete again for finals. During that competition, it was determined if they would go to nationals. The top four would go to nationals. I didn’t make it to finals, but several Paschal students did. After the long day of competing, the students from Paschal went to dinner together. 

There were many workshops going on during the trip that many students were able to go to when they weren’t competing. At the end of the day on Sunday, we had an awards ceremony. 

The students from Paschal who placed are:

Arianna Boyd, Nora Kersetter, and Irene Park (Introduction to Social Media Strategies || 4th place)

Michael Cruz (Accounting || 5th place)

Hannah Dickerson, Caroline Williams, and Catherina Vaughan (Introduction to Social Media Strategies || 4th place)

Henry Henken (Securities and Investments || 5th place)

Khoi Huynh (Accounting || 5th place)

Mavah Lawrence ( Insurance and Risk Management || 5th place)

Paria Pooraji (Introduction to marketing concepts || 5th place)

Daniel Sasano (Health Care Administration || 3rd place)

Andi Shipman (Journalism || 3rd place)

It was a very good experience to compete at FBLA state. I am looking forward to doing it again in the rest of my high school years!