Steelville High School’s Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) sent six students to the District 11 Leadership Conference on Feb. 10 in Lebanon. They competed against students from 18 other schools in the area and all six will move on to the statewide competition. 

Freshman Lizzy Warden placed second in Future Business Leader. Senior Elivia Pryor placed second in the Job Interview and fourth in Health Care Administration. Junior Leslie Blunt placed fifth in Accounting. Sophomore James Dahlby placed sixth in Economics.

For team categories, Warden and her partner, sophomore Abigail Schleuter, placed first in Business Management. Pryor and her partner, senior Sela Bell, placed first in Hospitality and Event Management. 

To qualify for states, a student must place in the top two in any event that requires a performance piece or place in the top five of any testing events. The students took home eight medals in total.

Advisor Jackson Case said in order to prepare for the competition, students were given a scenario and had 15 minutes to come up with a solution. They then received feedback on their work.

Case said seeing the students compete was rewarding for him and his fellow advisor, Roger Siwak. Steelville’s FBLA program has seen a recent dip in enrollment, so he hopes the students’ success can help encourage more to join.

“To see a young group come in that are already having such great success, even when we just wanted them to kind of get their feet wet and try it, and now to see them have such great success – hopefully we’ll only encourage them to keep trying and do more next year and continue to do better,” Case said.

The students will travel to the State Leadership Conference in April, which will be held in Springfield, and compete for a shot at nationals in San Antonio.

“They had a lot of buy-in for it,” Case said. “Really, really committed hard to practicing and I’m glad it paid off for them.”