Two Steamboat Springs High School students will head to a national business competition after beating out competitors statewide. 

Freshman Brynn Rose and sophomore Liam Miller will compete at the 2023 National Leadership Conference through Future Business Leaders of America after securing third and second place in their respective categories at the state competition.

“Future Business Leaders of America has over 200,000 participants at the high school level and roughly 8,000 students are involved in Colorado,” explained Matt Erholtz, the teacher advisor for the FBLA chapter in Steamboat. “There’s many realms kids can participate in, such as community service, leadership programs or competition.” 

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Rose and Miller chose to participate through competition with Rose focusing on clientele service and Miller working on e-commerce among more than 60 categories of competition they could have chosen from. 

“This is our first year and Mr. Erholtz really let us take control and gave us a lot of freedom with what we chose to do within FBLA,” Miller said. 

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Miller’s competition entailed building a website for a hotel, involving a presentation pitch to judges who acted as potential clients. Erholtz noted judges were looking at the functionality and technical aspects of the site in addition to judging the pitch. 

In the regional round of the FBLA competition, Miller won this category with a nearly perfect score. 

Rose’s competition with clientele services involved role-playing in real-world scenarios and she was judged on her reaction and handling of the situation.

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“You are given your scenario and 10 minutes to study it over, then you go into a room with the judges and act it out and they will ask you different questions,” Rose said. “It’s different every time, you never know exactly what you are going into.”

Rose had to navigate customer service issues including dealing with customers that broke the terms and conditions for an electronic company and helping a customer with shipping issues for the regional and statewide competitions.

For the state competition there were roughly 200 students participating in each event, according to Miller. 

Nationals will take place June 27-30 at the Georgia World Congress Center and the CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia. 

Members of the FBLA at Steamboat Springs High School have to raise $7,000 to foot the bill for this nationals trip. The club is looking for business sponsorships and donors in the community. Donations by check can be made out and delivered to Steamboat Springs High School, 45 Maple St., Steamboat Springs, CO 80487.