Written by: Akul Vijayvargiya

Photos provided by: Andrew Rattin

Last Saturday, the BPA club took their business skills to the district competition. Led by a team of nine seniors, the Trojans sent 23 of their 26 members to the state competition that will take place March 6-8.

The Economic Research team is composed of three of the twenty-three members going to state. The trio of Ryan Stemle, Will Boston and Eli Baker

were not rattled by the competition at district. Baker claimed he and his team were confident right from the beginning of the day.

“We were pretty confident going into the competition. We were up all night preparing. In fact, we chugged a good amount of Red Bull to make it through the night and ended up presenting off of one hour of sleep,” Baker said.

Another team going to state is an all-junior team comprised of Andrew Rattin, Travis Livermore, Ian Elliott and Ethan Shepherd. Placing first at district in Small Business Management, Elliott disclosed the team’s winning formula.

“Though we didn’t know our task until a couple months ago, we had been mentally preparing for this for about a year now,” Elliott said.

Though the BPA team succeeded in what some members claim “a challenging district,” they must work much harder in order to proceed to nationals, a rare but achievable feat. Very few Trojans in the past have made it to that stage.  

“My personal goal is to silence [the other teams] by executing at state and hopefully proceeding to nationals,” junior Laura Lenkey said.

“In all honesty, our team is very similar to Steph Curry: unstoppable baby!” senior Joey Huberts, member of the state-bound district-winning Global Marketing Team, said.

Club president, Jenilee Smith, was beyond ecstatic about the success at district.

“I couldn’t be prouder of such a great group of students. However, the job isn’t finished yet. The ultimate goal is to qualify for nationals this spring,” Smith said.
The Trojans have high expectations for state. With a high ranking at the district level, they believe that they can compete with their counterparts at state and send a handful of people to Boston for nationals.