This past weekend, school club Business Professionals of America headed down to their state competition at Oak Brook, Illinois, and had multiple members advance to Nationals. BPA is an organization for students pursuing careers in business management, office administration, information technology and other related career fields.

Over the four day weekend, qualifying members of BPA from all over Illinois traveled to Oak Brook and competed in a variety of events. There were 70 different events held at the State Conference, and over 1,000 students that attended this year.

The Metea Valley branch of students did exceptionally well at BPA’s State Leadership Conference this year. At last year’s State Leadership Conference, nearly 30 students from Metea entered, and two qualified for the National event. This year, around 65 students entered the State events, while 25 students made it to Nationals.

Testing of the students occurred on Thursday, and individual as well as group presentations took place on Friday. Within each event, individuals or teams have to receive a certain score on a rubric of requirements in order to qualify for nationals. 

The groups took pride in their accomplishments this year. “The Metea chapter of BPA did a phenomenal job this year overall, because we’re all one close knit family with the same goals in mind: making it to Nationals, and learning more about business,” BPA vice president and senior Rachel Willy said.

The team showed dedication by working together towards the goal of making it to Nationals, and accomplished their goal by moving forward 25 students to the National competition. Congratulations are in order for Metea Valley students that are on the BPA team. Nationals take place from May 10 to 14 at Orlando, Florida.