LUSK – At the beginning of the school year, FBLA had a rush party to get people to join.

The rush party was held at The Tiger Plunge and 25 people attended.

The people who attended Nationals in San Antonio this summer presented about State FBLA, National FBLA, and facts about FBLA. 

After the presentation, there was food and we watched the movie “The Meg” while swimming or sitting around the pool in the pool chairs.

It was a fun and successful rush party, most of the people that attended the rush party ended up joining FBLA.

During homecoming week, we decided to raise money for the March of Dimes. We raised money by putting jars at the office with teacher’s names on it and whoever had the most money had to get a pie in the face.

At the end of the week, when we raised the money, all the teachers that participated got a pie in the face. This was a good way to raise money because the kids loved seeing teachers get pie in the face. 

FBLA members have already attended several conferences including Fall Conference in Casper, LEADS officer training in Torrington and National Fall Leadership Conference in Denver, Colo. 

The first event we attended was in Casper. We went up for the day and listened to a speaker talks about how we react to obstacles in life and what to do differently to have a more positive attitude. There were several workshops we attended, including how to make a mission statement, table manners, ways to become a State Officer and many more. 

LEADS in Torrington is officers training so our officers were the only people that went up there. Our chapter officers are Bryn Bruch (President), Courtney Rowley (Vice President), Walker Kupke (Treasurer), Jasper Caldera (Parliamentarian), Abby Kottwitz (Secretary), and Danni Larson (Reporter). The officer team went up and learned what the state officers do to make FBLA better, come up with new ideas to help them build up the program, and work as an individual chapter on goals we need to get done in our chapter.  

FBLA members went to Denver for three days and anybody in the chapter was welcome to go there. We went up on a Thursday so we could go to a Nuggets game which was a ton of fun and a great experience. Then the conference started the next day, but not until the afternoon so we went shopping and went out to lunch.

Once the conference started we attended workshops just like we did in Casper, but the ones at Denver were a lot more fun. The only problem we had with the workshops is if you didn’t show up early for them you had to sit on the floor or stand, as there were several thousand kids at the conference. During the opening ceremony we listened to a speaker talk about entrepreneurship, he was a pretty funny guy. We went to workshops again on Saturday until we left in the afternoon to head back home. We got to stop in Wheatland to bowl a few games since we worked hard in Denver. It was a great end to a great experience being in downtown Denver.  

One of the opportunities the officer team organized while at LEADS was Little Dribblers.

On two Enrichment Fridays we  went to the Elementary and Middle School and had kids grades K-5th come in as a station. While they are there we taught them basic basketball skills like dribbling, passing, and shooting.

At some point during half-time of a high school boys basketball game, we will have them come out and scrimmage each other to show people all the skills they learned.

After this great experience, FBLA members decided to continue to help on Enrichment Fridays to provide mentoring opportunities to elementary and middle school kids.  

This year we decided to help participate in the Guardian Angel program. Basically, we bought presents for kids whose parents are deployed to help kids get through the holidays without their parents. We even bought presents for the kids of two Lusk alumni whose father is deployed. 

FBLA will also continue to support the Niobrara County Library during RIF.  FBLA and FCCLA collaborated together to open a coffee shop at the high school called Blended Beans. More information on this coming soon.

Soon we will start getting ready for state in March. We will have to create projects, presentations, and take tests. All members have big plans on making it to nationals in Salt Lake City.

So far this year has been a great start and we can’t wait to do a lot more as the year goes on.