photo courtesy of Nicky Boecker
On Jan 20, East hosted the Illinois Area 17 Business Professionals of America (BPA) regional competitions. They faced a record number of competition from West Aurora and West Chicago, but still pulled ahead with more than 65 individuals and teams qualifying for the state competition.
Among those is Senior Daniela Nether, who competed in Medical Coding and Parliamentary Procedures.
“This was my second year in BPA. I knew what to expect as far as the basics of the competition. I did find it surprising how many people chose presentation events instead of test and application events,” Nether said. “As far as my events, I was very excited to qualify for state for both of my events and I hope to make it to nationals in May.”
This was reflected in the results with just over half of the state qualifiers qualifying in a presentation event, with the most competitive event at the regional being small business management team and extemporaneous speech.
Junior Krisha Majundar, whose small business management team qualified for nationals the last 2 years and placed first on Saturday, was concerned about their chances of making it to state this year with the increased competition.
“To be honest we were a little nervous about making it. There were more teams than ever before and only two got to advance. Fortunately, we were one of them and believe we have a strong shot at nationals again,” Majundar said.
However, the same can not be said for the four West Chicago teams in the event that underperformed, not qualifying for state. In business law and ethics, Jensen Coonradt and Tyler Boecker took 1st and 2nd respectively in the regional after both finishing last year in the top 10 at nationals (Jensen 1st, Tyler 7th). Another strong performance came in with the East podcast production team taking first, far ahead of West Aurora’s second-place team.
The state qualifiers from last week’s regional will compete at the Illinois BPA State Leadership Conference on February 22-24 in Oakbrook, IL.
Tyler Boecker, Melissa Adams, and Charlie Lonsway are staff writers for Oswego East’s online news magazine The Howl.