When Eva Beidle (11), Rylie Huether (11), and Natalie Baker (10) competed in the FBLA district competition, they got second place in Broadcast Journalism. To move onto state, they needed to get first place. 

“At first we were a bit upset because we tried really hard on this project,” Huether said. “We thought the outcome would be a little better because of all the effort we put in it.”

On March 11, Mr. Carroll (FBLA sponsor) was informed that first place from another school dropped out of the Broadcast category. This gave Beidle, Huether, and Baker an opening for state. 

Not only were they now able to go to state, but they placed fourth and qualified for nationals. 

“I was very surprised and thankful because I was a little upset that we didn’t get first,” Beidle said, “but then I was very happy when Carroll pulled me out of class and gave me the news.”

During nationals, they will have to watch their broadcast with the judges and answer questions about it. With all of them only having a year of experience under their belt with FBLA, this is all new to them. In the Broadcast Journalism competition, there are around 10 schools in our district. State competitors are winners from every district, and nationals involve the whole country. 

In order to compete, they had to make their own seven minute show with a teacher spotlight, community event, and a history fun fact about OHS. They had to make it look live by doing anchor shots, editing, and taking footage of the stories they had on the show. 

In their teacher spotlight story, it was about how Mr. Gerdes (AP Euro Teacher) does photography outside of the classroom. The community event story was about Cookies, Cocoa, and Cramming, the finals tradition at OHS. Lastly, for the history segment, they talked about the history of Mr. OHS.

The show had to be uploaded to Youtube and sent to Carroll. He then had to send their show in to the judges. Carroll said, “We’re incredibly proud of the hard work they’ve done, and are really excited to see how they do at a national level, competing against students from all across the United States.”

Beidle, Huether, and Baker was not the only entry that qualified for FBLA Nationals. Two other OHS students are headed that way-Katie Seithel (12) for Economics and Jasmine Quach (11) for Journalism. We wish all three of the OHS entries the best of luck moving forward with this new experience.