Blackhawks win regional BPA competition, head to state

SEELEY LAKE - Students in Seeley-Swan High School's Blackhawk Business Professionals of America (BPA) group placed high enough in the recent BPA Regional Conference to move on to the statewide competition March 14-16. The students who will move on are Freshman Conner Chadwick in Financial Math & Analysis, Junior Hannah Ayers in Entrepreneurship, and Sophomore Cora Stone in Interview Skills as well as Ethics & Professionalism.

The school group was created earlier in the fall with SSHS Business Teacher Michele Holmes acting as the advisor. According to Holmes, the purpose of the group is to provide personal growth opportunities through education, competition, community service and personal development. A total of seven students are currently involved with the program and they meet monthly or as needed when prepping for competitions.

Six students competed in the virtual Regional Conference on Wednesday, Jan. 27. Participants included Chadwick, Stone, Ayers, Senior Jordan Johnson and Sophomores Kyla Conley and Tru Good. The way team members prepared for their event varied greatly depending on the events they were in.

Chadwick was recommended to join the club by a "trusted" teacher. To prepare for his Financial Math & Analysis event, he took past tests to get an idea of what questions would be asked. Topics included anything from calculating payroll to compounding interest on a loan. According to Holmes, Chadwick has not yet taken any math classes related to subjects like personal finance and business so he basically had to start from the beginning. 

Chadwick's favorite aspects of being involved are being able to improve his collaborative and communication skills.

"I found it nice because I was a part of something greater than myself," he said. "It's small but it's still a collaboration of a few young people."

Conley, Good and Stone entered into the Interview Skills event. Stone also serves as the Blackhawk BPA secretary treasurer.

In the event, participants apply for a hypothetical position at a fictional company by submitting a resume and cover letter and then participate in a mock interview scored by judges.

Stone said the conference and specifically the Interview Skills section was "an excellent learning experience" for her because she was previously unfamiliar with the business world. 

"It was great to learn about all of these different things that I had never really heard about before," she said. "It was really important to learn all of those skills like writing a resume and a cover letter. ... The finals interview was really enjoyable. The judges were really nice and it made me feel really good to know that ... that's what the business world could be like."

For the Ethics & Professionalism event, Stone had to first familiarize herself with a human resources handbook before responding to an ethical dilemma based on the guidelines set in the book.

She said while she is not particularly interested in pursuing finance as a career, she still believes the skills she picks up in the program will help with future job preparation. The most challenging aspect for her was absorbing all of the information required for the conference and managing her schedule during it with one event happening soon after the other.

For the Entrepreneurship event, Ayers had to write up and present a business plan which included market analysis and financials.

Outside of these events, the National BPA also allows students to compete in other virtual events. Johnson and Ayers have both submitted entries for a Promotional Photography contest that has not yet been scored.

Good, who serves as Blackhawk BPA president, said as a whole the group did several things to prepare for the regional competition.

"We would stay after school to get ready for our events and [studied] what we were expected to talk about," she said. "We obtained many skills from [the competition], such as leadership skills or even just skills coming from the interview, like how to handle an interview, how to set up a cover letter and a resume, which will overall benefit us greatly in the future world for many other jobs. My favorite part was probably doing the actual interview. It really ... makes you feel a lot more confident in yourself."

Good said she wanted to join the school's BPA group because it sounded like a good opportunity to expand her skillset.

"Our school offered it so you might as well do it and it helps you in many different things," she said. "Overall it's just a really good club that I wanted to be a part of and take action on."

Holmes said that all of the competition preparation took place after school, at home or during Friday intervention days. SSHS offers multiple business classes in a variety of subjects including accounting, personal finance and graphic design but not many of the lessons cross over into the material covered in the competition. In the future, Blackhawk BPA hopes to have its members travel overnight so they can attend conferences in person.

"There wasn't a lot of time to do a lot of prep work during our meetings, or during the day so these kids went above and beyond," Holmes said. "It's very challenging to start a club and then not have the classes with the information needed to really make it work."