LAKE ELSINORE - The Virtual Enterprise team at Elsinore High School received recognition for its business and marketing plans during the ninth annual California Virtual Enterprise Trade Fair in Bakersfield.

The team, which created a simulated golf retail business to compete against other Virtual Enterprise businesses from schools throughout the state and across the country, took first place in the business plan competition and second in the marketing plan competition.

With the first-place business plan, the team will represent the state in the national Virtual Enterprise trade fair competitionin April in New York.

Teams at the competition, which took place Dec. 5 and 6 at the Rabobank Convention Center in Bakersfield, competed in 13 categories. The competition for business plans, which spell out how a team's simulated business will run, is considered the marquee competition.

This was the first-year Elsinore had a Virtual Enterprise company, according to Fred Aspan-Martin, Elsinore High's Virtual Enterprise coordinator. He said it's unusual for a first-year program to take top honors.

A Virtual Enterprise is a simulated business set up and run by students to prepare them for working in a real business environment. With the guidance of a teacher and real-world business partners, the students determine the nature of their business, its products and services, its management and structure, and engage in the daily operations of running a business. Emphasis is placed on using current business software, communications and the Internet for business transactions.

The Elsinore High team worked with Golf Etc. of Temecula to set up its business.

There are 186 Virtual Enterprise teams in the state, about 400 in the United States and more than 3,000 in the world.

At Elsinore High, the program has been turned into a class and integrated into the Lake Elsinore Unified School District's career technical education program, which aims to create multiyear sequences of courses geared toward various industries that integrate core academic knowledge with technical and occupational knowledge to provide students with a pathway to post-secondary education and careers.

For its Virtual Enterprise company, the Elsinore High team created The Golffather, a golf retail and Internet business. The members of the team are Jonathan Lillibridge, Todd Straugh, Ian Perez, Tony Martinez, Charlotte Leverson, Derek Estrada, Anna Marie Villanueva, Caitlin Vecchione, Randy Brady and Megan Owens.

While Lillibridge, Straugh, Martinez, Leverson and Perez presented the business plan, Perez and Martinez presented the team's marketing plan, which took second place honors. Lillibridge and Straugh also took fifth place in the sales catalog competition.