Lewiston’s Business Professionals of America went to Boise for the state-level competitions March 2-4. Top winners from LHS included Henry Van Mullem, Evan Weidner-Durst, Payne Brown, Caroline McDermott, and the LHS BPA News Team.
Van Mullem won first place for Business Law and Ethics competition. He also took fifth place for Fundamental Desktop Publishing and fifth place for Digital Communications Concepts Open.
Weidner-Durst won second place for Meeting and Event Planning Concepts Open, along with fifth place for Fundamental Accounting.
The News Team got third place, featuring Olivia Brinkley, Kadynce Scott and Grant Webb.
Brown won third place for Device Configurations and Troubleshooting, and McDermott won fourth place for Fundamental Desktop Publishing.
Each person can compete in one individual event and one team event, or two individual events, and then can take as many open exams as they want. To join BPA, students have to take one of Davey Steele’s or Marne Feucht’s classes in the LHS career technical program.
There are 17 team events and 68 individual events, according to Steele. To go to the BPA state competition, students have to qualify at the BPA regional contests.
BPA is a career technical student organization that has competitive events that are co-curricular, meaning they are based on what students learn in the class.
Allyah Fine, a sophomore at Lewiston High School, competed in the medical side of BPA. Fine did the health insurance, medical billing, and health administration events. She placed in the top 10.
To prepare, Fine said she studied and did the practice test. She joined BPA because she heard about it from a friend.
“I heard it from a friend, and it sounded interesting, and when I found out there was a medical side to things, I was interested,” Fine said.
She added that people should join BPA because it’s a fun, welcoming environment, it’s an expansive club, and there are a lot of events students can choose to compete in.
