By Heather Jackson Contributor
Lafayette High School (LHS) Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) chapter members participated in the virtual 2021 State of Florida FBLA Leadership Conference in March.
According to the Florida FBLA website, "As the state organization of Future Business Leaders of America, Florida FBLA is dedicated to helping high school students improve their leadership skills and achieve academic goals. Florida FBLA encourages members to partake in multiple FBLA-PBL events and conferences across the state and nationally, enabling members to enhance their individual skills and gain monetary prizes, scholarship opportunities and university connections. The first FBLA chapter was founded in 1948 at Hillsborough High School in Tampa and has since spread with over 15,000 members across Florida, making it one of the largest FBLA-PBL chapters in the country."
Competition at the state and national levels are fierce. Teams must make it through preliminaries to make the top eight before advancing to the finals part of their competitions, where only the top five are announced as state winners. For the competition, which was held via Zoom, competitors had to research and develop a specific topic, which was outlined in the competition's criteria and present a seven minute live news broadcast to the judges. Following their presentations, judges conducted a three minute question-and-answer period, during which the competitors needed to defend all aspects of their newscast.
LHS is proud to announce team members Davis Jackson (grade 11), Cason Driver (grade 10) and Mallory McCray (grade 11), were named the 2021 Florida FBLA State Champions in Broadcast Journalism. Victoria Newman (grade 12) and Amandia Smith (grade 12) placed fourth in Sales Presentation and Harrison Jackson (Grade 7) placed fifth in the state in Middle Level Elevator Speech. Chase Wallace (grade 7) competed in Sales Presentation. State winners in Broadcast Journalism and Sales Presentation teams will compete in the National FBLA Leadership Conference in the middle of June by virtual forums.
The National Conference was originally scheduled to be held in Anaheim, Calif., but has been moved online due to the pandemic. All competitions and conventions have been conducted by online forums, for the last two years. It has been extremely challenging to present in competitions in a virtual setting, but the LHS students have proved they are leaders, rising to all the challenges and performing successfully. This group of LHS students has represented their school chapter with excellence.