Hundreds of students deck the bleachers of the Prosper Rock Hill High School arena. There is a sea of blue as far as the eye can see. Guest speakers and officers line up ready to commence with the opening ceremony and begin the HOSA Area 3 Spring Leadership Conference. Members take their seats anticipating a long day ahead.

On Jan. 19-20, Coppell High School took 180 members to the regional competition at Rock Hill. Members competed from 5-11 p.m. on the first day and from 6 a.m. to 12 p.m. the second day.

“Seeing everyone on the bus with their like suits was a wow moment,” said senior historian Pragnya Akula, who is a state qualifier. “I was like, ‘oh my God,’ this is real. We were all working so hard for this and it’s finally happening.”

This year’s opening ceremony was a little different from years past with Dr. Ben Winters, a popular orthodontist on TikTok, giving a special speech to the members.

“The opening ceremony was really interesting this year,” Akula said. “In the past, they usually talked about what’s going on in our international conference and the officer positions for next year but this year they had a really interesting guest speaker. He talked about how he saw that there’s a huge disparity between a doctor who doesn’t really care about his profession [and one who does]. He saw that there’s a big difference that he could be making so he saw that and he went to Tik Tok.” 

With competitions throughout the night, students spent any spare time they had preparing for the competition.

“Honestly, it was somewhat excruciating because I got there for my round at 5:45 p.m. so I stood there for an hour waiting for them to check in and tell me when it’s starting,” state qualifier Ashia Agarwal said. 

As competitions progressed, members awaited the announcement of who advanced to the next round.

“I was very anxious the entire time because we knew that our event was well known and a lot of people would compete, but we did not expect the sheer volume of people that we actually saw,” said senior secretary Bhavana Ananta, a state qualifier. “That’s kind of when we lost hope a little bit but then whenever we made it to the second round. I was really anxious up until then but after it happened we were in shock.”

Calls and text messages spread throughout the halls of Rock Hill as members learned they advanced to the second round.

“Pragnya called me because she got to the results first and she told me that we made it to the second round and I was like, ‘oh my gosh, there’s no way, how did that happen,’” Ananta said. “I was so surprised and before I could even celebrate that we made it to the second round the anxiety that we had to prepare for the second round kicked in immediately.”

Anxiety and tension filled the room as placings were announced during the closing ceremony. Many were unsure of whether or not they would even be on the board.

“Honestly, I didn’t expect it,” Agarwal said. “Kartik [Koranne] was sitting next to me and he was counting down. He kept saying ‘seven events until yours. Five events until yours.’ and was thinking ‘don’t tell me, don’t tell me I don’t want to know.’ I saw first I’m thinking there’s no way, I thought I did make it and then I got first it was wild. I literally ran at top speed and in heels to get to the stage.”

As the state qualifiers were announced all of the Coppell attendees erupted with applause and excitement as their friends walked the stage.

“I lost my voice because I was hooting and hollering for our students,” HOSA advisor Rachel Chesney said. “It’s so exciting seeing our students’ names up there and seeing their excitement is a lot of fun to watch. The screaming and hollering and not just the ones that won, but the other members are also supporting them and cheering them on. The really exciting part is to watch everybody cheering for everybody and seeing Coppell High School up there on the board.”

Leading up to this event, the competitors had been working on their competitions since October to make sure they were prepared.

“Pragnya and I were talking about how we wanted to do our board and how we wanted our thing to be unique,” Ananta said. “We looked at Google a lot for references, but we found that there was lots of overlap in the projects so we wanted to do something different. We started our research for all of the criteria for our board and then the last week was whenever we basically put everything together.”

While some were competing for the first time, returning competitors hold a special place for the event in their hearts.

“The environment like that you’re in is something unique,” Ananta said. “In health care there aren’t really moments where you are competing against other people so this is a really fun way to be with your friends, make connections and see what you are interested in.”

With their recent success at state, the Coppell HOSA chapter hopes this catapults the program into future growth.

“The more success that students have, the more they want to come back and do it again,” Chesney said. “There’s all kinds of things that people can contribute to so they can put their talents where they lie. All of the events are what they will do in the real world so by learning it now and practicing it, they gain confidence and excitement towards if they’re on the right path for their own future, not just in the competition, but for their lifetime.”

The state conference is in Galveston on April 3-6.

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