FHS wins honors at national convention

Photos by Laura Hilzendeger

FIFE HIGH SCHOOL FBLA SCHOLARS (LEFT TO RIGHT) TIERNEY KUHN, LAUREN SUTTON, KAITLIN LARSON, IN HAE LEE AND KIRSTEN SCHUMACHER. Jessica Colburn (left) attended as an FBLA Peninsula Region Vice President.

Fife High School was recognized with top honors this year at the national leadership conference of the Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) in Chicago.

Approximately 7,300 students and advisors from across the country attended the conference representing 38 states. Over 50 different events were offered to participating students representing a wide range of activities in business and leadership development.

Those who attended the conference competed in regional and state competitions to get there. About 65 students from Fife High School went to the regionals this year in Bremerton, which hosted about 300 students altogether. At the state competitions in Spokane, about 46 students from Fife High attended with about 2,500 more students from around Washington.

Those who made it from regionals on to the national conference in Chicago represented the best and the brightest from among the FBLA’s total membership of 250,000. FBLA-Phi Beta Lambda Inc. boasts participation from among 12,000 middle school, high school and college chapters worldwide. With 101 FBLA members, Fife High School has the second largest chapter in the state.

Fife High School was represented by six students: Tierney Kuhn, Jessica Colburn, Lauren Sutton, Kaitlin Larson, In Hae Lee and Kirsten Schumacher. The high school’s FBLA co-advisor Laura Hilzendeger, who is also the students’ business and marketing teacher, went with them to Chicago. Steve Weidenbach, who teaches web design and business classes at the high school, is head FBLA advisor.

“I could not have asked for six better girls to take to a national conference to represent themselves, Fife High School and Washington state,” Hilzendeger remarked.

The six competitors and Hilzendeger were in Chicago for about five days, which left some time for sightseeing and to attend a Cubs game. The FBLA competitions lasted for three days with closing ceremonies on July 1, wherein the top 10 students and/or teams were recognized onstage with awards.

Some of the Fife High School students competed in Digital Video Productions and Job Interview categories, squaring off against approximately 120 teams and/or individuals. They competed in preliminaries and from there, the top 15 advanced to the finals.

Kuhn, who will be a junior next year, received national recognition for her first-place win in the Human Resources Management competition, an open event. She competed against about 3,500 students. Lee participated in the Job Interview competition and made the top 15.

Colburn did not compete, but attended the conference as a Peninsula Region vice president, assisting and representing Washington state as an officer. She also ran the meeting of Washington state FBLA officers at the conference.

“She did an awesome job and was an excellent representative of Fife High School and Washington state,” Hilzendeger said.

As vice president of the Peninsula region for FLBA in Washington state, which basically encompasses the area between Fife and Forks, Colburn said she attended a lot of meetings at the conference where she had the opportunity to meet and collaborate with the 12 other officers that comprise the FBLA’s Washington state officer team.

“It was busy but fun,” commented Colburn, now going into her junior year at Fife High. “This was really a time for us to come together, have fun and really spend some time together getting to know each other because we’re going to be spending the next year together as state officers.”

Colburn said that over the coming year, she’ll be busy planning for the 2008 regional conference and contacting schools in her region to reactivate dormant FBLA chapters or to help start new ones.

As part of her competition in the Job Interview category, Lee had to submit a resume and application in preparation for an interview to get the job as administrative assistant for a business called the Merit Corporation. In the preliminary, she was interviewed by a two-judge panel. Placing in the top 15 sent her on to the finals, where she faced three judges.

“It was fun,” said Lee, who graduated this year from Fife High School in the top ten of her class, “but sometimes you don’t know what the judges are expecting.” She had to think quickly when her interviewers presented her with certain on-the-job scenarios and asked her how she would handle the situation.

Larson, Schumacher and Sutton took ninth place in Digital Video Productions. The three had to create a three-minute public service announcement/fundraising video about the March of Dimes.

“We did a story on how people waste change and how they could donate it to the March of Dimes,” Sutton explained. “That’s the reason I joined FBLA this year, because of the video competition. Me, Kaitlin and Kirsten are very into video and film.”

After showing their work to judges, the trio gave an oral presentation in which they addressed how they handled the specific requirements necessary to make their video, and then fielded questions from the judges.

“We were the only all-girl team,” Larson noted.

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