Cypress High School’s Future Business Leaders of America had an FBLA state competition from April 7th to April 9th at the Ontario Convention Center. The students in FBLA were able to choose what events they wanted to participate in such as Business Communications, Broadcast Journalism, Graphic Design, Entrepreneurship, Cyber Security, Website Design, Coding & Programming, Computer Problem Solving, Political Science, Network Design, Public Speaking, and many more. In the competition, the students were expected to follow a specific dress code, wearing business attire and socks that reached ankle length.

Dheeraj Koppu, a freshman at Cypress High School chose Coding & Programming as well as Computer Problem Solving for his events, winning third place in the state. For his project, he made a program that had the attributes from google maps like rating, distance, and cost. Being a part of FBLA has taught him to be the best he can be while learning from his mistakes. He also met many new people, but the person that stood out to him the most was Steven Segawa because he was good at engaging with the audience. Something that Dheeraj thinks that he could have improved more on was having more detail in his presentation and being prepared for the judges.

Koppu’s advice to future FBLA students is to “give yourself enough time beforehand to finish the whole program and don’t give up no matter how hard it gets.”