featured image courtesy of karen chipman

Students of the two Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) teams, Entrepreneurship and Management Decision Making, placed first in regionals, and second at states. Senior Victoria Kroencke and junior Cate Boulter will be advancing to nationals in Atlanta, Georgia on June 29- July 3.
This is the first year marketing teacher Karen Chipman, has sponsored the FBLA teams, and she is impressed with their determination and success in competition.
“These kids are knocking it out of the park, they really are,” Chipman said. “I’m very happy with how well everyone has done so far.”
Sixteen students competed in the regional competition online, which consisted of a series of computerized tests. Eight students scored high enough to move on to states which were held in Reston, Virginia and featured two rounds of competition: tests and role-play.
“If you get a high enough test score then you move on to the role-play part of the competition. You get 20 minutes to read over a situation and prepare your response, and then you go into a room with judges for seven minutes,” Chipman said. “You tell the judges your problem and then the solution you came up with, and then they grade you on everything from your presentation to the way you’re dressed and how you speak.”
Of the eight students that went to states, four advanced to the role-play round. Seniors Tyler Deavers and Diana Mejia competed on the Entrepreneurship team and placed third in the role-play round. Kroencke and Boulter of the Management Decision Making team placed second in the role-play round and qualify to compete in the national competition.
“This was the first time we’ve competed in the role-play section with FBLA, and so I didn’t really know what to expect,” Kroencke said. “For the role-play we had to pretend like we were managers of a construction company, which was kind of scary, but we ended up actually doing really well.”
Chipman got the call that her Management Decision Making team would be moving on to nationals in the middle of prom.
“Ms. Chipman ran up to us during prom and told us that we had placed second and would be moving on to nationals,” Boulter said. “We were all so excited and also kind of shocked because we had been pretty nervous about what the judges had thought of our role-play.”
Students interested in business attend nationals from all over the country. It will be a new experience since this is the first time that Fauquier’s FBLA students will be competing in nationals.
“I’m excited to be there and meet other people that love business and want to pursue that,” Kroencke said. “It’s going to be cool to be around so many people that have the same interests as me.”
To help prepare for the competition Kroencke and Boulter practice often, and agree that it is the key to success during competitions.
“Going to Atlanta for nationals is going to be so much fun, especially because I love Georgia,” Boulter said. “Right now we are mostly just making sure that we are taking practice tests and going over possible role-play situations so that we really know our stuff come June 29.”