Marian Catholic High School's chapter of the Future Business Leaders of America participated in the Region 23 Conference, held Dec. 15 at Susquehanna University.

Participants were greeted by the region's copresidents, Joey Wolff and Marian's Faith Befano.Following the leadership workshops, there was an awards session recognizing the top four competitors in each individual event and the top two teams in the group and speaking events.First-place winners of the group and speaking events advanced to state competition.As many as 24 of the 37 Marian students attending the conference actually competed, with eight winning first in their category. Marian will be represented at the state conference in Hershey by 12 students. The State Leadership Conference is one of the major events in the Pennsylvania FBLA year.Members who qualify to attend participate in a variety of workshops throughout the two-day event at Hershey, as well as attempt to advance further in their category of competition to nationals.Marian students eligible to attend the state conference in April are: Teague Schmidt, first, and Nicholas Kubishin, third, in Business Calculations; Tyler Wackley, third in Business Law; Kaitlin Kowker, fourth in Health Care Administration; Aaron Srinivasan, fourth in Introduction to Business Communications; the team of Taylor Horvat, Kayla Rodick, Rachel Meier, and Olivia Schugardt, first in Parliamentary Procedure; Megan Ferrello, first in Public Speaking I; Faith Befano, first in Public Speaking II; and Nichole Baba first in Job Interview.Placing in the top 5, but not eligible to attend the state conference are: the team of Heather Getten, Annette Ritzko and Melissa Ramirez, second in Business Ethics; the team of Peter Dubravski and Ian MacDonald, second in Entrepreneurship; Olivia Palmieri, fourth in Computer Applications; Kathryn Healey, third in Impromptu Speaking; Emily Pilla, fourth in Word Processing; and Alison Walck, fifth in Business Communication.