The next round of competition for the Health Occupation Students of America, HOSA, will take place at the HOSA Spring Leadership Conference in Irving Jan 30-31. Students will attend opening and closing award ceremonies, and have the chance to participate in more than thirty skill events, including sports medicine, EMT and first aid skills.

“I’m really excited to get to go to the conference and to see what happens at one, even though I won’t be competing,” sophomore Paige Christiansen said. “Hopefully we’ll get to take what we learn back to the other club members so everyone can know what it’s like at one.”

Students had to place in the top 10 in the area to move on, and while few did, the HOSA members have high hopes for next year.

“I think next year we’ll have more people go onto the next round,” Christiansen said. “We didn’t know what to expect this time around, but know that we know we’ll get better prepared and go a lot farther. I’m excited to start getting ready for next year.”

The HOSA competitions happen once a year, and will start again in the fall.

“Because I didn’t know what to expect this year, I wasn’t really that prepared,” sophomore Miranda Perry said. “Next year I’m going to know what I’m doing though, and I think that’s really going to help a lot of us advance and score higher later this year.”

With this being the first year of the HOSA, none of the students have done anything like it, including sponsor Amy Tokarz.

“Since this is our first year as a chapter, I think we’ll get to learn a lot of things that we’ll be able to implement into our own club at home,” Tokarz said. “So far this year we’ve done things like have guest speakers come and talk about things such as physical therapy, cystic fibrosis and other topics. Maybe by attending this we’ll get ideas from other schools and students about what they do to prepare for future careers in medicine.”