The BPA national leadership conference is an amazing experience that I wish more people from our chapter will be able to have in the future. This past May 6-10 2026, in Nashville Tennessee at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention center, other members of the Wyoming BPA chapter and I who qualified attended the BPA National Leadership conference. At the conference, we competed in the events we all qualified in and did other various activities.
The Hotel that we stayed in was massive and had many sections. The way the hotel was laid out was almost like a stadium where the rooms were all lined up on the outside and in the middle, there was a large outdoor area where you could travel from section to section. The outdoor area had a river that ran all throughout it and there were a lot of palm trees in the outside area.
Nationals was a really fun and amazing experience for all that attended, “I would say my overall experience at nationals was a ten out of ten and something truly memorable and exciting.” said Allan Barientos. “Whether it was competing or just talking to new people to trade pins, everything was great.”
Nationals lasted 5 days. Day 1 was mainly the bus ride there where we stopped at Buccees which is just a big gas station. Day 2 was when prelims happened, and all of us competed to try to make it to finals. On day 3, we competed in finals and I competed in my testing event that I qualified for. On day 4, there was the award ceremony where almost everyone from our chapter made it on stage and on day 5 there was the bus ride home.
One of the best parts of nationals was the pin trading that occurred– how it worked was that everyone came with some pins from their state or country, and you asked other people if they wanted to trade pins from their state or country with yours. It was a really fun way to network and meet new people. Allan Barrientos stated, “My favorite moment at nationals was for sure just trading pins with everyone since you got to meet new people, talk about everything, and you got to keep pins from so many places.” One of my other teammates, Koen Bowyer, stated, “Pin trading was really fun, even though some countries were very stingy with their pins and tried to sell them.”
Nashville was a cool place to visit, but it wasn't really for me. Broadway smells terrible, a lot of the buildings are run down, and most of the places seemed to just be bars or saloons and none of us can drink, however there were some nice looking areas and some fun places to visit. Koen Bowyer stated “Nashville was cool, but I feel like they could have chosen a better spot because outside the huge hotel, it was not that exciting.”
At Nationals, our chapter had 10 people qualify in their various events. Our Broadcast News Production team got 4th place, our Economic Research team got 4th place, I got 5th in Legal Office Procedures, and Sydney Holt got 7th in Entrepreneurship. I would say that competing was fun but also very nerve wracking at the same time.
Overall, nationals was a great experience where we met a lot of people from different backgrounds and had an amazing time. I hope to make it next year to experience it another time with our amazing members from our chapter.
