Photos courtesy of Neenah Eben Pictured are the Marshall High School Business Professionals of America members who competed at the 52nd annual National Leadership Conference recently in Dallas, Texas.

MARSHALL — When members of the Marshall High School Business Professionals of America’s Global Marketing team learned they were in the finals, they were shocked.

And when they were named second in the nation, it was “insane,” said Ashtyn Eben, one of the team members.

Members of the Marshall High School Business Professionals of America chapter competed at the 52nd annual National Leadership Conference recently in Dallas, Texas. The Global Marketing team of Eben, Daniel Van Keulen, and Ignacio Larios made finals and placed 2nd overall. The Computer Animation team of Parker Terfehr, Simon Zahrbock, and Izach Harris made finals and placed 4th overall. The Computer Animation team of Kyle Murphy, Jett Skrien, and Daniel Bauer made finals and placed 9th overall. Tyler Persons made finals in Computer Security and placed 2nd overall, and Daniel Van Keulen also made finals and placed 7th overall in Prepared Speech.

“This year has been the most successful of any BPA chapter I have advised in 24 years with 20 students who earned their way to nationals and then of the 14 that attended, it was the most finalists as well,” said MHS BPA adviser Brenda Kellen. “Minnesota overall had many students medal and even place in the top third, which says a lot about the quality and knowledge of not only Marshall BPA students, but Minnesota in general.”

Eben said the idea of the Global Marketing competition is to create a 10-part marketing plan to promote and expand whatever business the team is tasked with.

“This year the business was a construction company that wanted to build tiny homes like on the TV show ‘Tiny House, Big Living,'” Eben said. “None of us had any prior knowledge of marketing so it was a lot of researching and asking questions.” The team ended up interviewing Amber Werner to learn more about what goes into a good marketing plan. Werner worked for Schwan’s for many years and recently took a position with Rio Nutrition as a marketer. “Once we finished writing the plan, we had to put together a PowerPoint presentation to present to judges. We even made a little model of a tiny home out of Styrofoam boards.”

The competition at nationals was fun, but Eben said it made her really nervous.

“I get nervous really easily when it comes to presenting so I’m extremely grateful I had my teammates to calm me down,” Eben said.

Eben said the team was relieved when it made finals.

“It was a lot of frantically refreshing the results page and waiting to see if we made it,” Eben said. “We were actually at a bowling alley when the results finally got in, and we were pretty shocked.”

On stage, however, was an even bigger surprise, Eben said.

“Daniel had just turned to me and asked ‘how do you think they plan to fit an entire team of people up on that podium?'” Eben said. “I turned back to him and jokingly responded, ‘I don’t know, good thing we don’t need to worry about it.’ Almost immediately after that they announced us as the second-place winners. It was insane.”

Eben said she thinks what led to the team’s success was that all three of the members brought something different to the table. Van Keulen is an amazing public speaker, she said, and Larios had gone to nationals in BPA last year in personal financial management and handled a lot of the numbers that went into the Global Marketing team’s research.

“I did a lot of the artistic pieces such as the logos and flyers for our promotional mix,” Eben said. “Together we were able to pull of something we were all truly proud of, even before it got us to second place.”

Persons has been in the Computer Security category for the last three years.

“I like to think my competition can entail anything that involves computers, but it mainly focuses on data privacy, business continuity and networking,” he said. “It involves three parts — a certification exam, another exam and a hands-on portion.”

Competition at nationals was tough, Persons said.

“I thought if I was lucky I would get third because two kids finished before our time was up in the hands-on portion of the competition,” he said.

Persons had prepared for the competition by reading a book for the certification exam and by reviewing previous years’ notes.

When he won second place, Persons said he wasn’t thinking much.

“I didn’t believe that I had jumped 13 spots and was second in the nation in Computer Security,” he said. “Overall my competition is hard, but I love it and am excited to shoot for first next year.”

For Computer Animation, Terfehr said a topic is released, and this year’s was hockey.

“We were tasked with designing and animating a hockey game inside of a hockey stadium,” he said.

Terfehr said they all worked on the project, but he did the technical stuff, and Zahrbock and Harris made the ideas and helped with the presentation.

Terfehr said there were many talented animators at the national competition who had really good videos, so he’s happy with how his team placed.

The Computer Animation team was confident with its video, Terfehr said.

“However, we knew there were really good videos that we saw on YouTube, so we hoped that we were going to place in the top five.”

When the team learned it got fourth, Terfehr said they were excited with the results.

“We knew that we did not place top three, so we were hoping to get fourth,” he said. The team hopes to get in the top three next year, he added.

Van Keulen said Prepared Speech is a unique competition because of the fact you can do almost anything you want.

“The only requirement is that you have to prepare a 5-to-7-minute speech about anything related to business,” he said. “The speech that I gave this year was an informational speech about cryptocurrency.”

The competition at nationals was a big step up from the state competition, Van Keulen said.

“I saw competitors with professionally-made visuals and extremely interesting topics,” he said.

Van Keulen said he performed his speech very well in the preliminary round.

“However, the quality of the competition caused me to believe that there was no way I could make finals,” he said. “When I saw that I made the final round, I was extremely excited. To place seventh in the nation in a category that so many compete in is unbelievable.” He added that placing second with his Global Marketing team made the national competition unforgettable.