TEMPLE, Texas — Two Temple High School students will be Florida bound in May after making history at the Texas Business Professionals of America (BPA) State Leadership Conference in Dallas earlier this month.
The Temple High School BPA chapter had one student qualify for the national competition and another student earn a spot as a national alternate based on their performances at the State Leadership Conference. Sophomore Mason Abbey qualified to compete in Nationals after finishing in sixth place in Fundamental Word Processing at the SLC. He is believed to be the first Temple HS student to qualify to compete in the BPA National Leadership Conference. Abbey is proud to make history and is looking forward to competition. But he also sees the impact his involvement with BPA can have on his long-range future.
“It feels great, and I think when I realized that all my hard work paid off, it just felt amazing,” Abbey said. “I learned that repetition is an extremely useful tool for instilling something in your mind. This achievement is something great to put on a resume, but beyond that, being part of BPA, the organization as a whole, is a really great learning tool to propel me into college because of the contacts I have been able to meet.”
Sophomore Steve Baca will be a national alternate after placing 11th in Intermediate Word Processing. Both students had to put data in the proper format during the contest and competed against up to eighty other students. Baca is proud of what he accomplished and already has plans to compete again next year.
“I feel like I put in some hard work, and it felt amazing to hear my name called. Now it just makes me want to work harder for next year,” Baca said. “I learned that I am way more capable of doing things than I sometimes give myself credit for. These competitions are really going to help when we get into the workforce, because finding jobs and making more money is really a kind of competition.”
Temple High School had a total of seven students qualify to compete in the state competition and THS BPA advisor Jessica Cuellar said she is so proud of the way all of the students competed at the state level. She is in her second year as the chapter advisor and says she has seen so much growth in that time, not just in the student’s performance, but also in the chapter’s size. She is also hopeful that Abbey and Baca’s success will help inspire other students in the organization to keep pushing themselves to see what they can accomplish.
“These kids worked so hard for to prepare for this, and I am so proud of them to see that hard work pay off,” Cuellar said. “I want them to just really take everything in at the national conference and get the experience. They can network, intern there, and even take some certification courses. The others see that it can be done to get to nationals and are already talking about next year. This really brings positivity and helps build the program.”
The BPA National Leadership Conference will be held May 7-11th in Orlando, Florida. BPA allows students to compete in contests in over ninety categories under six Assessment Areas including: Finance, Business Administration, Management Information Systems, Digital Communication & Design, Management, Marketing, & Communication, and Health Administration.