Fairfield business students place fourth at nationals

FAIRFIELD – Three incoming seniors from Fairfield High School earned a prestigious honor at the Future Business Leaders of America's national competition, placing fourth in a pool of more than 10,000 FBLA students throughout the country and abroad.

The students are Kevin Kretz, Liam Wells and Nathan Whitney, and the national competition they participated in occurred June 29-July 1. Normally, students would attend nationals in person, but they were held virtually this year due to the coronavirus.

It was the third year making it to nationals for both Kretz and Wells, but the first for Whitney, who just joined FBLA this past school year. The trio earned fourth place in the category of website design. They had to create a functional website with multiple pages and graphics, and then explain to a panel of judges why they made it the way they did.

These three chose to create a website for a discount airline. The airline is fictitious, as are its logo and tagline, which the boys invented. They named their airline Aeolus Air, a reference to the Greek god of wind. The website is visible to the public, and can be seen at wellsli.wixsite.com/aeolusair.

The website looks just like a legitimate airline booking website like Expedia or Orbitz. Visitors to the site can enter which airport they're flying out of and which they're flying into, learn about the company's baggage policies, its rewards programs and watch a two-minute promotional video the students made for the site.

Wells designed the company's logo, since he enjoys art and has experience with graphic design. Along the way, as the students progressed through the stages of competition starting with regionals, then state and finally nationals, judges gave them feedback about what they should change on the website.

One judge even suggested changing their company name since they found it too hard to pronounce.

The trio was really set on 'Aeolus” and decided that instead of changing the name, they would focus more on explaining its meaning. Several judges at the regional level suggested changing their slogan, which was initially 'Aeolus Air: Flowing with the Wind.” The boys eventually settled on the slogan they took to nationals, which was 'Aeolus Air: The Wind Beneath Your Wings.”

Judges made other suggestions about the website itself, such as making certain pages less cluttered and making the site flow better.

Kretz said all three have experience in website design and a good base of knowledge in computers generally. They created this website using a program called Wix, which allows users to bypass complex coding to allow them to focus on visuals.

'It was important to create a nice interface,” Kretz said.

The students said they benefitted immensely from being able to take their presentation on a 'trial run” at the FBLA Showcase, an opportunity for the students to give their presentations to local people before competition.

The event is held every year at the Fairfield Arts & Convention Center. Local business professionals are invited to watch the students and give them feedback.

'Presenting it at the FBLA Showcase eased our nerves and allowed us to polish our presentation,” Kretz said.

'Presenting with those other two guys helped take the nerves off, too,” Whitney added. 'We trust each other.”

The students wrote a script for their presentation and divided the parts among the three of them and then memorized their lines. They used all seven minutes they were allotted for time.

Since the boys took their project all the way to nationals, they won't be able to do website design again when they compete in FBLA this coming school year as seniors. It's a rule the organization has to prevent the same kids from winning an event year after year. Wells said he might try an 'objective test” this coming year, might he might do another presentation. Kretz said he's thinking about competing in the job interview category.

'I want to try all the things FBLA offers,” he said.

Whitney said he's likely to try a test like Wells.

Fairfield FBLA Advisor Deborah Matthews said she's proud of the three boys and all members of Fairfield FBLA who competed this year. She complimented the three on winning first place at regionals and state before finishing fourth at nationals.

She noted that since early March, the students have not been able to meet at the school and have had to do everything in their own homes and online to update their presentations.

'I am very proud of all of our group with all of these challenges as they stepped up and did an amazing job,” she said.