10 Creston students compete at FBLA nationals

Creston High School’s Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) chapter was the only one from Iowa to receive the Outstanding Chapter award at the FBLA National Leadership Conference June 29-July 2 in Atlanta.

“I was pretty surprised we were the only one from Iowa,” said Shannon Smith, Creston FBLA chapter adviser. “You have to do about 20 different activities to receive that recognition, and then when I saw there were only 110 chapters out of thousands of chapters (at nationals) that received it, that was pretty cool.”

Ten Creston FBLA students competed in nine team and individual events at nationals. They also attended workshops and did networking. This year was the largest National Leadership Conference to date, with more than 12,000 students and advisers in attendance and more than 9,000 members competing in events from around the globe.

In addition to being an Outstanding Chapter, the Creston chapter was recognized for completing the Chapter Challenge and was one of two Iowa chapters to do so.

Chapter Challenge is a contest that encourages recruitment, retention and member involvement. There are three programs in the contest – Super Sweeps, which focuses on recruitment and retention; Non-Stop November, which focuses on World Prematurity Awareness Month and American Enterprise Day; and Action Awareness, which focuses on promoting awareness of FBLA and Phi Beta Lambda (PBL) programs.

“These programs really go to show that our kids are really hard workers and that there are other ways for them to be recognized besides placing in their events,” Smith said.

FBLA member Ann Waigand, who graduated in May, went to nationals for her third time and competed in two categories: American enterprise project and digital video production.

“It wasn’t our strongest run-through of the projects, but I thought we did really well overall,” Waigand said. “One thing I (improved on) was public speaking. I had never been very good at that before FBLA. Now, being able to speak in front of crowds is something that has really helped me, and I have learned to be more confident.”

Waigand will attend Iowa State University beginning in the fall to study criminology and criminal justice.

While none of the 10 students placed individually at nationals, several students won first-place awards at the state competition in April.

The top four students in each event in each state competition proceed to nationals.

“Placing at nationals is very hard to do, as they’re up against the top people from all the different states plus some different countries, like China, Puerto Rico, Haiti and Canada,” Smith said. “I think the students prepared well for the competitions. It’s just that sometimes other schools have better projects or they have access to equipment our students don’t. We as the state of Iowa, only three of us placed.”

After this competition, some of the Creston students are motivated to place next year, Smith said.

“They watch people in the finals, so they kind of see what level they would need to be at to be at the finals and how long those people have prepared,” Smith said. “I think they got a better sense of ‘If I really want to place at nationals, I’m going to have to put six months into this project instead of two.’”

Adviser of the Year

In April, Smith was named Iowa’s FBLA Adviser of the Year. She was nominated for the title by her students. Smith was publicly recognized at the national conference.

“That was pretty cool. As an adviser, that’s basically the only thing you’d ever be onstage for,” Smith said. “It was pretty neat to see all these advisers from different states who are doing great things with their chapters and get to be among that group.”

She added: “It also brought home how lucky I am to have students appreciate some hours I put into FBLA because they’re the ones who nominated me at the state level and, without them, I wouldn’t have been up there.”

Moving forward

In an effort to help students be more prepared in the future for competitions, Smith is seeking to launch a small competition for area FBLA students to practice before state and nationals.

“A lot of other states have regional, sub-state competitions, so people are getting feedback and having an opportunity to change up their projects multiple times before they get to nationals, so I’m looking at trying to develop something in southwest Iowa so chapters in our area can ... have stronger projects,” Smith said.

Getting feedback from different audiences is helpful in understanding where judges might come from during nationals and what they’re looking for in a project, Smith added.

“This is something I’m going to try to work on for this next year,” Smith said. “It wouldn’t be necessarily as high stakes as those other states have, but ... a lot of advisers feel that with kids in winter sports and some schools charging for busing, it wouldn’t be feasible to have a regional competition before state because of monetary and time issues. So, we’ll see how this works out, but it’s something I really want to do for our students to get them more experience.”

Student projects

Advertising – Sophia Schuler

Agribusiness – Cora Green

American enterprise project – Cora Green and Ann Waigand

Community service project – Kelsi Kautz and Rachel Shepherd

Digital video production – Rachel Shepherd, Angel Stow and Ann Waigand

Entrepreneurship – Ben Irr, Dalton O’Riley and Isaac Wignall

FBLA principles and procedures – Kelsi Kautz

Local chapter annual business report – This is a report turned in ahead of time with no presentation. Katie and Kristy Powers wrote this report but did not attend nationals.

Spreadsheet applications – Sam Eagan