This year, 15 Manhattan High students will be a part of the thousands of students who make their way to Anaheim, Calif. for the Business Professionals of America’s National Leadership Conference.

“I’m pretty excited. It’ll be my first plane ride,” junior John Benfer said. “It’s a national event for Business Professionals of America so we’ll be competing at the national level.”

From Tuesday to Sunday, the students will compete to showcase and develop business and leadership skills.

“I’m doing Entrepreneurship so I’ll present a business to a panel of judges and then they’ll see if it’s worth investing in or not,” junior Sakif Hossain said. “I wanted to apply my business skills more so by going to this national conference, that’ll help… If I do well, my parents might give me money to start my business this summer.”

Benfer will be competing in PC Servicing and Troubleshooting.

“I saw the opportunity to expand my skills with computers [so I joined BPA],” Benfer said. “If I do well enough, I can become certified so that would be pretty cool.”