The seven members of the school’s FBLA team who participated in the State Leadership Conference during spring break walked out of the Sacramento Convention Center with five plaques, proud of their accomplishments thus far for the year.

The conference, which ran from April 6-9, attracted around 2,200 students from over 100 California schools. Students can either qualify through tournaments in the Bay Section, the regional conference Saratoga competes in, or choose to participate in events that begin at the state level.

But in order to compete at FBLA conferences such as the State Leadership Conference or Bay Section, schools are required to have an adviser present with their students throughout the duration of the event. However, because the state competition happened during spring break this year, many teachers already had plans and were unable to chaperone for the team.

Ultimately, a parent was able to chaperone the team throughout the conference.

“Even though we had a hard time smoothing out the logistics for the conference like finding an adviser, I think the conference was a good experience for our members as many of them performed very well,” Huang said.

Out of the seven who attended, four received awards. Sophomore Caroline Wang won fourth in Introduction to Health Care, sophomore Victor Liu received 10th in Public Speaking II and the Mobile Application Development team consisting of junior Caitlyn Chen and sophomores Alexandra Li and Bassil Shama placed fourth.

Both Wang and the Mobile App team placed high enough to move on to the National Leadership Conference to be hosted in Anaheim from June 29 to July 2. This year, FBLA will be sending more members to nationals than it has in the last three years combined.

“I'm proud that our members performed well, even with limited resources.” Huang said. “Thirty percent more of our members qualified to nationals this year as opposed to previous years.”