During the early months of the year, the Future Business Leaders of America have a schedule full of competitions and major annual events. Two such events, which occurred in the past two weeks, were the LifeSmarts state competition and the FBLA regional competition.
The Marshall chapter of FBLA this year had 14 events that placed first in FBLA regionals, the highest in the county according to FBLA sponsor Rebekah Glasbrenner. As for the LifeSmarts competition, one team from Marshall was only three points, or one question, away from getting first place at the event.
“Our team, Statesmen 3 Been Had Polo, did compete last year, and last year we were knocked out by another Marshall team in the semifinals,” FBLA member and senior Peter Marr said. “This year we made it to the finals, which was a huge accomplishment for us, even though we didn’t end up winning.”
Both competitions, however, required a lot of preparation to reach such high standings.
“For FBLA regionals, there are about 52 different events for FBLA competitions, so I didn’t necessarily prepare individually with everybody, but I provided information for everybody. Preparations for them varied from quizzes online to practice presentations and speeches,” Glasbrenner said.
The participants practiced a lot without Glasbrenner’s supervision, though, devoting time to preparing for the upcoming competitions.
“We had several sessions at a team member’s house where we took online monthly quizzes of various LifeSmarts topics, which helped us practice and learn the material,” Marr said.
The overlapping of these two events did not have as much of an effect on the participants as it did on Glasbrenner, since the majority of students only competed in one of the two events. The importance of the events varied, according to Glasbrenner.
“FBLA goes throughout the year, but all of the competitions are within two months [of each other],” Glasbrenner said. “There are many more kids involved in that one, so I guess in that way it’s a little more important and time-consuming for me just because there are more kids to deal with.”
Although having both competitions near each other did not have a large effect on the majority of the participants, time put into practicing for the event was still a commitment.
“We started working on our business plan in November and it was due at the end of January,” FBLA member and junior Anna Shipman said. “It was a huge time commitment because it was such a long paper.”
Shipman, who won a first place award with her group in the Business Plan, a written event, joined FBLA this year.
Some participants had a different view of the amount of time that the groups had to spend on preparation for the event. According to Marr, the competitions are “not a huge time commitment;” however, “you can definitely put an appreciable amount of time into really learning all the material if you are devoted to winning.”
In contrast to the FBLA competitions that only allow FBLA members to compete, the LifeSmarts competition is open to all students.
“Typically in past years, it’s been almost all FBLA members, but this year I probably had about half [FBLA members] and half [non-FBLA members],” Glasbrenner said. “LifeSmarts themselves are not connected to FBLA; they’re a whole different entity. They do partner with FBLA, so there are competitions that bridge the two, but it’s not exclusively FBLA.”
Shipman and her group “found that competing in FBLA improved our leadership skills, language skills and time management skills because there are no extensions,” Shipman said. “FBLA is a great program to learn about the business world and to help better prepare us for the future.”
Along with the FBLA competition, LifeSmarts also aims to develop the participants’ skills across a broad range of topics.
“LifeSmarts deals with topics that are important nationally and globally, and by reviewing all the material and learning the topics, we learned a lot about finance [and] business,” Marr said. “And who knows, maybe one of us will be on Jeopardy one day and use what we learned at LifeSmarts!”