TAHS students are all business

BPAers shine at regional competition

More than a dozen hard-working and driven Tracy Area High School students took part in Monday’s Region 8 Business Professionals of America competition in Marshall, with a number of them earning a trip to state.

The Podcast Production Team of Rosa Vang, Gretchen Lanoue, Chloe Sweetman and Natalie Vue — otherwise known as the “Pixel Chicks” — placed first overall.

“It was fun to watch this group come together,” said BPA advisor Stacy Schuh. “They are very different personalities with diverse interest areas, which I think is what helped them to form an informative and entertaining podcast. Their work sessions were filled with much laughter and creativity.”

The topic for this category was to explore how artificial intelligence impacts the arts, and Schuh said the foursome did a lot of research and conducted many interviews.

“One factor that helped these girls stand out from other students was including the fine arts into their discussion in the podcast,” Schuh said. “If you search on YouTube for a podcast by the ‘Pixel Chicks’ you will be enlightened.”

Other first-place finishers for TAHS included Serenity Yang, Prepared Speech; and Aliyah Loftness, Presentation Individual.

Yang talked about Key Concepts in Business for her speech. Judges’ comments included that she had good preparation, which showed by knowing her content and topic well.

Loftness’ task was to create a multimedia presentation that shows how generative AI is shaping today’s classrooms. Lanoue took second in that category.

“There were at least three totally dierent drafts of Aliyah’s presentation that I saw; she put an abundance of time and eort into creating this presentation in multiple formats until she found the one that was most comfortable for her,” said Schuh.

Loftness continued her friendly rivalry with Marshall High School student Ben Brandl in Digital Media Production, placing second, while Brandl took third.

“This is a contest that Aliyah has competed in for several years,” said Schuh. “She and Ben have a healthy competition with this, and she was super excited to have edged him out this year by a half a point. It will be fun at state to see who comes out with the advantage.”

Vang also placed second in Prepared Speech; her topic was “How BPA Helps Students Get Career Ready.” The judges’ comments stated that she is a very poised speaker and used her personal experiences well in her examples.

AnnaRae Bowman was second in Economic Research Individual. The topic for her research this year was “How important is earning a college degree in 2026.” Bowman was to research the economics of this topic, prepare a research paper and a presentation to the judges.

“Hopefully she will be sharing her research with all of our high school students as they make decisions for their futures,” said Schuh.

Bowman was also sixth in Advanced Word Processing, where a student completes four documents using Microsoft Oce in a timed test. If there is a tie in scores, time is factored in as the tie breaker. Students must format the documents according to a company’s specific style guide manual.

“The challenge AnnaRae had with this one was remembering how to do a mail merge and adding dierent headers on the same document,” said Schuh.

Andria Johnson, in her second year of BPA, was second in Payroll Accounting.

“We have not had an accounting class at the school for several years, so it is impressive that she has gone out and watched YouTube videos and other sources to learn about this topic,” noted Schuh.

The Small Business Management team of first-year BPAers Taylor Squires, Hailey Hubner, Adam Hippe and Makayla Erickson took second place. This category gives the students a business profile and some of the problems that the business is facing. The students then must put together suggestions for how to solve those problems with the business.

“This group was very insightful with their responses,” said Schuh. “One of the early days when they were brainstorming solutions, I remember listening to them talk and being so impressed with how deep they were thinking into the problems of the business. This group didn’t need to be pushed to work on their project. They really worked well together and capitalized on each teammate’s strengths.”

Hippe, a former member of the Lyon-Murray CEO program, was also third in Entrepreneurship. He prepared a business plan for a start-up business and presented it to a panel of judges.

“One comment that stood out from the judges was that it was evident that Adam definitely knows the products that his business sells and the cost to produce the amount he makes per product sold,” said Schuh.

Evelyn Ourada placed fifth, and Erickson was sixth in Business Law and Ethics, which tests students’ general knowledge. Schuh said they prepared for the contest with the Business Law class they were in this past semester, but added that they didn’t have much time to cover the ethics portion so that came from outside research. Ourada was also fifth in Medical Coding.

“This is also a test on the student knowledge in Medical Coding,” Schuh said. “Evelyn does her preparations for this contest on her own as we don’t have any course at school matching this topic.”