Dogies are all business in Laramie

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Reporter
 
It wasn’t a large Dogie delegation who headed to Laramie last weekend to vie for honors at the State Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) competition, but the contingent proved that it’s not the size of the Dogie in the fight, but the fight in the Dogie that matters.
“I only took 17 kids due to conflicts with other activities, and only five of the 17 did not qualify for Nationals,” head sponsor Alysha Engle smiled. “It may not be as many regarding numbers as we’ve had in the past, but it’s certainly the best percentage of qualifiers we’ve had.”
The competition was hosted by the School of Business at UW in Laramie for the first time this year, and due to that it was moved back to coincide with the University’s spring break. It was the change in schedule, and the conflicts that created, which limited the number of participants this year.
“The university did a wonderful job hosting, but the timing made it more difficult for kids to participate because of commitments to other activities,” Engle explained. “But those that did have the opportunity to go did an awesome job!”
Engle stated that she took more kids in projects than she has in the past, with only one student assigned to the objective test category.
“I usually don’t enter anyone in the objective test categories since they usually have about 150 entrants, which makes it really hard to qualify anyone,” she began. “But I was told that Zade Orsborn is super bright and since he was in Thailand when I was assigning projects, I threw him into the Intro to Business test category. It turned out that was a good decision because he won, and that marks the first time we’ve had anyone place first in an objective test category!”
Two project based entries also finished first in their categories. In Public Service Announcement (PSA), the team of Cade Ostenson, Sawyer Roberson and Zach Purviance received top scores, while the Intro to Business Presentation team of Slade Roberson, Tristan Troftgruben and Purviance did the same.
The PSA team was given a topic which was Workplace Soft Skills. For their project they had to produce a 30 second PSA, they had to interview a local business person to see what they thought were important soft skills in the workplace, and the team was required to research what were important skills. The crew interviewed Justin Tystad and narrowed down what they thought was important and what he thought was important, and then used that information to produce their video.
“When they put together their presentation, they went down the rubric to make sure they had included all required elements. One of those elements was to involve the judges, so they decided they wanted to have a game,” Engle began. “They imbedded the number seven on all of the slides, and on the last one they told the judges they were going to get them involved with soft skills by using teamwork to figure out what was on each slide that didn’t belong and they had 10 seconds to do it.” 
The judges did figure it out, and then the team did one more involvement by bringing the judges in to do a public service announcement breakdown. They huddled up and said “communication” on three. 
The presentation, combined with the judge involvement piece, were enough to elevate the team to the number one spot in the category.
The other first place for Newcastle was the Intro to Business Presentation whose topic was Giving Tuesday which is a new movement building on the progression from Thanksgiving to Black Friday shopping to Cyber Monday shopping. The idea behind Giving Tuesday is to give back rather than spending money on oneself. 
“I always make my kids dress in matching clothes, so they came into the presentation wearing green shirts and black ties, and their Powerpoint was also green and black,” Engle stated. “The marketing professor from UW was one of the judges and he started talking to them before they were even set up about how they were already practicing branding and how amazing they were, so that was awesome.”
Purviance, Troftgruben and Slade Roberson had to implement technology into their presentation so they included links to a Facebook account they had created as well as an online funding account into their slide show. Apparently, the team made an impressive impact on their panel of judges with their presentation.
“All three members were very comfortable presenting,” Engle smiled. “One of the judges in finals was one from the previous day, and when they walked out she said to the other judges ‘this is the team I was telling you about, sit back and relax’. So they knew they won even before the ending ceremonies.”
Finishing in second place in Webpage Design were Hailey Wehri and Sierra Checketts. Sawyer and Slade Roberson, along with Troftgruben, took third place in Community Service, while the team of Makenzie Wagoner, Kaylee Sweet and Isaiah Brooks were fourth in American Enterprise.
All of the placing teams qualified to compete in the National competition which is being held in San Antonio, Texas, beginning on June 29 and ending on July 3rd.