Wayland shined at the Business Professionals of America Regional Leadership Conference Wednesday, having 12 students place and qualify for the state level competition in March.

More than 300 students gathered at Lake Michigan College to compete in business management, marketing, technology and networking. Nineteen student members of the Wayland Union High School chapter of BPA showed their skills and many of the students brought home the gold.

Achieving first-pace awards were:

• Hailey Carpenter in Fundamental Desktop Publishing. She also was second in Presentation Management Team

• Ashlyn Schafer in Business Meeting Management Concepts, also taking second in Small Business Management Team.

Other runner-up honors were earned by:

• Trenton Moore Fundamental Spreadsheet Applications and Presentation Management Team.

• Amber Beggs  and Mackenzie Banas in Presentation Management Team.

• Logan Bishop, Chad Stoepker and Robert Mucci, Small Business Management Team.

Kaitlyn Good was third in Interview Skills and fourth in Extemporaneous Speech.

Anna Gesink was third in Banking in Financing. Julianna Muscarella was fourth in Fundamental Spreadsheet Applications, as Samantha Sager in Presentation Management Individual.

These dozen students will represent Wayland at the 2017 State Leadership Conference March 17-19 at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel in Grand Rapids, where they will compete with students from across Michigan, attend workshops designed to aid in professional development and gain valuable skills for their lives ahead in the world of work. Top students at the state conference will advance to the National Leadership Conference, held in Orlando, Fla., in May.

Business Professionals of America is a national career/technical student organization for business students on the high school and college levels with more than 54,000 members across the country. The organization strives to prepare a world-class workforce through the advancement of leadership, citizenship, academic, and technological skills. Through membership in Business Professionals of America, students gain valuable real-world experience as they network with students and business professionals from across the state and nation, better their community through service-learning projects, and compete in demonstrations of their business technology skills on the regional, state, and national levels.

PHOTO: These Wayland High School students have advanced to the state level of competition in the Business Professionals of America conference at the Amway Grand Hotel in Grand Rapids in march. (Photo courtesy Laurie Zywiczynski)