Junior Dakota Scott and his teammates attended the competitive Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) State Leadership Conference when he and his team were asked to develop a unique and innovative presentation. After arriving on Friday the 13th and discovering the club had advanced to states in the competition Scott said, “We were given a prompt and it asked us to create a presentation for a video game, and we created it using our knowledge of marketing.”

The presentation was clearly one for the books after they were awarded for the presentation. Scott and his team then moved on to the next stage of the competition. He said, “We presented it, and found out we won Saturday night.”

Scott, sophomore Trevor Kimmel, and junior Joseph Litz won second at regionals and fourth in states.

Junior Jackson Martingayle is another member of PA’s FBLA team which represents the Tidewater region including several other school systems. “I won the Business Law fifth place, and there was a Marketing team that placed fourth,” said Martingayle. The PA FBLA team has consistently done well at States in the past and continued their success this year.

According to sponsor Ineiceola Goodwin, “At the State Leadership Conference we have dynamic motivational speakers, they do workshops, they have different community service projects, and these students compete at the state level.” At the conference, every year over 6,000 students who attend the conference participate in the March of Dimes which is associated with FBLA, and was one of the community service projects.

Established back in the 1950s, FBLA is “a huge organization of business students,” said Goodwin. “Students compete on different business topics, and it ranges from A through W for short, which means A for accounting and W for Word Processing.”

Students involved with FBLA also have the opportunity to compete or learn about “public speaking, business, management, decision making, marketing, and economics,” said Goodwin.

The challenging state conference held in Reston was “a multi-person multiple choice test for the first two rounds,” said Scott, “which got us through regionals, and it was me, Joseph [Litz], and Trevor [Kimmel] sitting down at a computer all together answering a multiple choice test.”  Since this test requires extensive knowledge, commitment, and business skills, this made the competition even more challenging; however, PA left the conference with an award acclaimed as the Honor Chapter.

In order to receive the Honor Chapter, schools must raise 100 points prior to the conference including community service efforts and many more activities. PA’s FBLA team put a lot of well-earned effort into winning this award.

The final accomplishment of FBLA States was PA-ATC student Joshua Bailey who won first place at the State conference and will be attending Nationals in Baltimore, Maryland this summer.

Although the State Leadership Conference held in Reston has concluded, the team should continue to grow as students “want to be a part of an organization that will help them to succeed in fundraisers, community service, and competitive events,” said Goodwin.