Triumphing with a successful competition, Diamond Bar High School’s Future Business Leaders of America competed in the Inland Section Leadership Conference (ISLC) in Los Osos High School in Rancho on February 10.

Taking place each February, the ISLC event is a daylong FBLA conference that is attended by about 10 high schools in the San Gabriel Valley area. At ISLC, the team competed in their own specified categories, such as sales presentation, word processing, computer application, and more. Each conference is split into chapters, which are the organization at one particular school or location. The events included multiple workshops and networking programming. The DBHS team successfully won third place in the sweepstakes with various winners within each category. With this win secured, the team will have an opportunity to participate in upcoming state competitions.  

Junior Natalie Zhou placed second in her chapter for business communications. Zhou participated in two events, Business Communication and Computer Problem Solving. These contests included objective knowledge, meaning that 100-question tests were given instead of presenting.

“Guess to me, placing [second] justifies the effort and time that I put into studying and preparing for the event. In a way, it makes it feel as if my efforts have been recognized,” Zhou said.

As for Zhou herself, this was her second ISLC event, which she noted a lot more people had attended than previous years. Last year had only about 20 participants, but this year saw the number grow to 60. She says that with more people involved in the event, it made the competition easier.

“We were the loudest chapter at the awards ceremony, and we definitely represented DB well,” Zhou said. “Usually I prefer to go through the competency list for my events and try to do as much research as possible on the topics that I’ll be tested on. Then once I feel adequately prepared, I take practice tests to pinpoint the areas that I need to improve my knowledge in.”

With this being Ku’s first FBLA event, junior Cheryl Ku placed fifth in her chapter for marketing. 

“This was my first event with FBLA, so it really opened my eyes to the entire FBLA organization and how supportive our school chapter is. I was able to connect with people from our school [that] I’d never spoken to before and ultimately [created] numerous new bonds with the FBLA community,” Ku said.

Ku was a part of the economics and marketing events in both activities, there were objective tests that had to be taken in order to succeed in the competition.

“To prepare for these events, I used resources such as FBLA practice tests I found online as well as different Quizlet study guides relating to each of my events,” Ku said. “Knowing that I’ve placed at ISLC is definitely good motivation to do even better at states this April.”