by Christina Joyce

Former state secretary Rachel Matthews will be attending the national conference in Washington, D.C. next week as president for the Business Professionals of Massachusetts. Matthews was elected at the state conference that took place March 5-7.

The State Leadership Conference was held at Assabet Vocational School in Marlborough and Keefe Technical High School in Framingham. Rachel Matthew, Olivia Barrett, Robbie Bowen, Felipe Ramos, Marisa Duplisea, Shayna Diedrich, Allie Carver, and Erica Santos competed against 500 other BPA students at the conference.

BPA has been participating in the State Leadership Conference for five years. In the past, students have placed in the top three events and have gone onto the national conferences in Dallas, Anaheim, and Reno. If the students place well, they move on to compete in the national leadership conference, where they could win scholarship money or other prizes. This year, Duplisea and Diedrich came in fifth place in the network news category.

Barrett, Matthew, Carver, and Santos came in seventh place in the presentation management category, while Ramos and Bowen came in tenth place in the same category.

Sophomores Duplisea and Diedrich talked about what their first conference was like. “BPA was a lot of fun,” said Duplisea. “At the beginning it was kinda confusing, and I didn’t really know what was going on, but once we understood what to do and what to expect from it I really started to enjoy it.”

Diedrich adds, “BPA overall was very interesting, once you understood what was going on.”

Diedrich also talked about their presentation. “We did a four minute newscast. Our news topics were MCAS tying to college success rates and international child abduction. It felt very good to place fifth in our category, since our category was fairly new, and we did not know what to expect from it.”

Although the students did not place high enough to move onto states this year, club advisor Christine Williamson says, “The students came back with great ideas and were very enthusiastic for next year.”

Any students interested in joining should contact Williamson in T104.