On June 25-28, the Health Occupations Students of America (HOSA) team won the parliamentary procedure event, a competition where mock business meetings are held and teams from around the nation compete by following a set of guidelines and ethics in said meetings. Being one of the district’s newer teams, it’s a massive achievement for them to win first place. Most students, however, don’t know what HOSA is or why there is a team for it.

HOSA is a national program endorsed by the Department of Education and the Health Science Technology Education Division of the Association for Career and Technical Education.

One HOSA member who competed at the event, senior Caroline Talkington, expressed her thoughts on the matter.

“It was really fun,” Talkington said. “It’s so nice because it’s not a health-based event, but it still pertains so much to the health industry in the sense that if you do go into the health industry, this is how they will always conduct the meetings.”

The competition was hosted at the Gaylord Hotel in Dallas, which has hosted many other HOSA and Business Professionals of America (BPA) events.

“The people you meet there are so amazing because you have all these other people who are involved in the healthcare field, and you’re able to meet all these people from all these different states,” Talkington said. “There were people from Hawaii and people from Canada because there were international competitions, too— I loved that.”

As the day drew to a close, and their victory drew near, tension was at its highest.

“It was very exhilarating because when they call you up, they call all the teams who are in the top 10. When you go up there, you don’t know what place you got. You could’ve gotten 10th— for us being a really new team, it was very nerve-racking to be called up,” Talkington said. “When they called third and second, we thought we hadn’t even placed in the top three. Then when they said ‘Ryan High School’ for first, it was really amazing. We did something really cool at the national level that a lot of people can’t say they’ve done before.”

Mrs. Helen Hayes, the HOSA sponsor, had outstanding words for her team’s hard work and dedication.

“Coming out of a competition, you’re always second guessing yourself as to whether you did or didn’t do well,” Mrs. Hayes said. “They count it down from third— so it’s third, second, first. When they got to second, they were thinking ‘oh, we got fourth’. They were pretty euphoric when they found out they got first place.”

The team was up against many other competing groups, as Mrs. Hayes said.

“There can be three teams from each state,” Mrs. Hayes said. “I’d say there were probably 40 states represented, so around 54 teams.”

Mrs. Hayes wasn’t the only one who helped get the team ready for the big day, however.

“My husband is a parliamentarian, and he meets with them once a week to study because there’s a 300-question test that goes along with the event,” Mrs. Hayes said. “He also helps them work on their script, their debate, and everything else that goes along with parliamentary procedure.”

Mrs. Hayes offered her thanks to the team for all their time spent preparing for the event, and to her husband for taking time out of his work life to help the students prepare as best they could.