The Cupertino Courier

Education

Homestead High is home to future leaders

By ANNE WARD ERNST

Homestead High School crushed the competition in the Future Business Leaders of America state championship last month, beating its nearest competitor by 79 points with a total of 378 points. The team goes to the national championship in Nashville, Tenn., in June. For a record eighth consecutive win, the Homestead students beat cross-town rivals Lynbrook (218 points) and Monta Vista High Schools (153 points), which took third and fourth place, respectively. FBLA is a national nonprofit student organization that works to prepare students for business leadership roles.

The state competition included individual and team events. Some of the events are tests. Others require speaking and presentation skills. Individual first-place Homestead winners include: Adrian Lam in Accounting 1, Nikita Khetan in Business Law, Yuanyu Chen in C++ Programming, Jim Danz in Computer Concepts, Charles Liu in International Business, Drew Haven in Java Programming and Rohit Ramchandani in Introduction to Business. Chapter and team event first-place winners from Homestead include: Edward Wang, Michael Chen and Khang Pham for Business Ethics Team; Michael Pearce, Emma Tolley and Wendy Huang for Multimedia Presentation; and Charles Liu, Visish Srinivasan and Annie Stoner for Entrepreneurship Team.

In the individual business law event, Homestead took first through sixth places: Nikita Khetan (1), Jim Danz (2), Ning-Ning Ding (3), Brenda Boyle (4), Eric Jin (5) and Ginny Van (6).

Other notable Homestead individual places include: Aaron Wong, second in Computer Concepts, and second in Java Programming; Michael Chen, second in Future Business Leaders; Drew Haven, third in Business Math; and Stanley Szeto, third in C++ Programming.

Other notable chapter and team placements include: Annie Stoner, Jennifer Garnett and Sunny Chu, second in American Enterprise Project Team; Nathalie Arbel, Caroline Wong and Sunny Chu, second in the Business Plan Team; Eddson Alcid, Shawn Xu and Edward Wang, second in Partnership with Business Project Team; and Emma Tolley, Brenda Hwang and Mary Plavec, second in Community Service Project Team; Katherine Sun, Visish Srinivasan and Charles Liu, third for Local Chapter Annual Business Report Team; and Piyush Goyal, Nitish Aitharaju and Sicheng Liu, third for Network Design Team.