Superior students head to state competition

SUPERIOR – After winning first place with a video project, four Superior High School students are headed to the Business Professionals of America state competition later this year.

The competition will be the presentation of an educational video created by the groups on a given topic. The group’s topic was about the importance of keeping hydrated.

Michele Smith, Heather Kelly, Nadiea Ewounik and Sierra Bruning are the group behind the video. They chose to focus their video for regionals on keeping hydrated in sports. The presentation required a large variety of skills and tested more than just video production ability.

The group needed to present the video confidently and were judged on their bearing as they spoke. Smith recalled it was difficult because they had to keep smiling and maintain an energy level they may not have felt. They needed to project confidence all through the presentation.

While the video won first place, Kelly said the competition showed the group some ways to improve it.

The original video focused mainly on the sports aspect of keeping hydrated. The group wants to change this and has been busy reworking the video, almost from scratch. According to Smith and Kelly, the new video will incorporate information on hydration in day-to-day life as well.

“[It’s] definitely way more important than just thinking about sports,” said Smith. “Other people, from everywhere else, are like ‘hey, I’m not a huge sports freak why would I like this video?’ We pretty much didn’t think about everyone in general but now we are.”

The changes will need to be made quickly, though. The deadline for changes to the submission is closing in fast.

Smith and Kelly were confident of their chances at state. As the only returning members from the group last year, they know what to expect from the competition. Last year’s team had some problems, which have not come up with the current group.

Smith also felt the video last year was not as good as this year’s. While the other video took fourth, hopes are high for this year’s project to do even better.

The state competition will be difficult. There will be over 2,000 kids from across the state involved. Approximately 30 groups usually compete at once and only the top two groups are sent to the next level of competition.

“They have prelims and finals,” said Kelly. “So, if we don’t pass the first time, then we’re out.”

Smith will have a second chance to go past the state competition in a different category. She also took first place in a solo project for digital media production. This would be her third year at the state competition for the category.

Despite her experience, the road will be a difficult one. The topic of the competition has changed from previous years. Past year’s projects were to create a plan to promote the competition’s host city. But now, the subject has been changed to getting investors interested in BPA.

“It’s not going to be as easy as it was last year because I knew the prompt, I knew everything about it,” said Smith. “It’s a bit more of a challenge for me this year than it was [in the past].”

She already has a plan for the new video, though. Smith plans to contact colleges who fund BPA and find out why they decided to put money into the organization. The information would then be used as promotional material to other groups and businesses.

If the girls win the state competition, they will go to the national competition in Indianapolis and compete against BPA groups from all 50 states. The state competition will be on March 13 in Billings.