Three of nine Business Professionals of America students that competed in the state competition in Dallas March 6-9 advanced to the national conference in Anaheim, CA May 1-5.

“The students they had to qualify to get to state, so it’s an event that they did back in January at regionals, here in Frisco, so some of them were studying for tests, particularly on what subject matter they were going to be tested on, and the other ones that were on teams were actually preparing their projects,” BPA adviser Jeb Matulich said. “They won at regionals and qualified for the state meet which is where we were 2 weeks ago.”

One of the three advancing to the national conference, that state competition featured mixed results for senior Nikhil Yerva as he advanced in Computer Network Technology, but his Network Design Team didn’t.

“For my team event our whole group met up once or twice a week for the month leading up to competition which involved a lot of collaboration and changes on our part to be ready for such a competitive event,” Yerva said. “We were definitely disappointed we felt like we could go further in the competition more so due to the effort and quality of work that we put out.”

Junior Kapil Rampalli advanced in C++ Programming, with sophomore Shunmathi Rajesh qualifying for Anaheim in Fundamental Spreadsheet Applications.

“The students had different events that they competed in. Some had written tests, some were presenting projects, and there were a couple that were on teams that has a problem solving type of thing,” Matulich said. “Friday was kind of a continuation of that, some of the finals events and things were on Friday, and then on Saturday there was an awards ceremony.”

While his Network Design Team did not qualify for nationals, senior Amer Juspovic sees the lasting benefit this club and the competition will have on his professional life in the future.

“We felt disappointed at first because we were aiming for nationals, but we eventually came to terms with it and realized we had learned so much from the whole process,” Juspovic said. “ I’m already pretty invested in computer science and business, so I think this will really just help prepare me for the types of situations I will likely face in the future.”