The starting point for every FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America) members journey to success is the annual district competition. The category of tests has already happened last month in December, so now it’s the performance events who have a time to shine.
This 2025 year the district competition for Pinellas County was held in downtown St. Petersburg at the UCF college campus. Students participated in a performance event traveled there on January 10th.
FBLA is a big club for Lakewood HS. The advisor Mr. Borg works directly with the district to make these events happen so; students also work to make sure everything runs smoothly.
At the district competition the FBLA officers worked as runners for the events bringing competitors to their place of business. They also had help from other volunteers and officers from different schools as well.
Of course, its super awesome that Lakewood students get to help run events, you get the real business experience. But the main event is the competing.
The showcase came up fast for some of the Spartans. It felt like you were just choosing your event yesterday in the opinion for Freshman Devin Fougere at Lakewood High School. He competed in the event intro into public speaking and was present at districts on January 10th. “I only had one minute of my speech memorized the day before, I really rushed it,” says Devin.
Another iconic event that takes place at districts is officer candidate speeches. Students submitted running applications prior and give their speeches to a group of voting delegates from each school. The delegates then vote for who they think should be in office for the next school year, results are announced at the awards ceremony a few weeks later. Usually, Lakewood brings 5 people as voting delegates each year due to the size of our chapter.
This year it was a goal to get as many people in office as possible. There were four candidates running for four different positions. Junior Jared Jackson ran for South Region Vice President for the second year in a row. He explains, “I enjoyed the thrill the first year, that I had to run for the next.”
We’ve got some big runners this year at Lakewood with us having Junior Jayden Nguyen running for both District President and the ability to run for region 4 Vice President at States. Jayden competed against 3 other people for the position of President and gave a three-minute speech. He absolutely crushed it; the chapter has their fingers crossed for positive results. Also running this year was Sophomore Aroura Hunt for the position of Historian and Freshman Lauren Jackson for the position of Secretary.
The results will be released soon! To the state competition, Lakewood hopes to bring 80 students, qualifiers and voting delegates. This conference will be held at the end of spring break and it’s a different level from districts, competing against everyone in the state. But the FBLA members will be ready to take on their goal of bringing as many people as possible to Anaheim, California, the national conference.
