Marriotts Ridge High School students are gearing up for a big finish for their 2024-2025 Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) competition season. MRHS hit a record high of students that qualified for National Leadership Conference (NLC) in Anaheim, California from June 29th to July 2nd with 56 of 96 MRHS students who attended the state competition qualifying. Students are working hard to improve their work from the state competition to put their best showing forward at the national level.
“Most of the credit goes to the competitors at regionals and states for putting in the work to ensure that they move on to the next round, but MRHS FBLA did help facilitate the preparation process by offering multiple mock competitions and study nights with hot chocolate to help encourage studying,” mentioned senior and FBLA President Utkarsh Mandsaurwale.
The FBLA Club has expanded greatly this year with over 200 members causing more members from Marriotts Ridge to participate at both regional and state competitions than in past years.
“We had over 150 students competing at regionals and close to 100 at states. This year, we had 56 students qualify for nationals, an MRHS record. For nationals, we will be taking a similar approach and ensuring our competitors have the resources required to succeed on the national stage. If all goes well, we hope to see a record-high number of national finalists as well,“ added Mandsaurwale.
For regionals, students had the chance to choose from an array of events and topics for the conference and many decided to choose an event that related to their future career goals.
“I qualified for Health Administration because I want to go into healthcare and I like the field and helping people which is why I did the Health Administration test event,” said junior Siri Makam.
To prepare for FBLA nationals, students are taking their previous work or studying tactics to the next level by examining the points they did not get in order to ensure their best work is being put forward. Many hope to place well at nationals and are using their feedback to their advantage.
“We basically spent the week before states practicing our presentation and memorizing it and we got 2nd place. We’re just going to look at the rubric and try to make our presentation better based on what we lost points on,” explained sophomore Sarayu Thatikonda.
This year, students along with attending the national conference will have the opportunity to spend a day at Disneyland. This exciting opportunity is very compelling for students and allows them to celebrate the hard work that got them qualified for nationals.
“I’m excited to hang out with my friends and go to Disneyland at nationals. I did a testing event and I did pretty good, I got third place in spreadsheet applications. I’m going to prepare by studying more because I feel like I didn’t study enough so I need to prepare more for nationals since I only did a practice test,” said junior Sharva Kanaparthi.
This FBLA competition season has resulted in a record number of nationals qualifiers in MRHS FBLA history due to the increased interest and work being put in by members. MRHS students have put in countless hours of work and they are in turn being rewarded with placing well at both the state and national levels. Now, students are taking the work from the state conference to ensure they place as well as possible at the national conference that they have been looking forward to all year.