A thick layer of fog hung over Pioneer High School’s parking lot as buses idled in the darkness, their headlights cutting through the mist. 200 students gathered from Ann Arbor high schools in the early hours of April 16, preparing to leave for the HOSA state competition in Traverse City, Michigan. Just hours earlier, Ann Arbor had been recovering from severe storms and tornado warnings.
“I remember my dad frantically looking out our windows the night before we left for Traverse City,” Andrea Skerlos, CHS sophomore, founder and president of the CHS HOSA chapter, said. “My mom told us all to go to the basement, so I grabbed my dog and my siblings. When I looked outside, I saw a completely green sky. I was already nervous for HOSA, but with the storm, I wasn’t sure how plans would change.”
The next morning, HOSA members scrambled to finalize their dress clothes and have their speeches memorized in order for their competition to go well.
“We were all on FaceTime, desperately trying to figure things out at the last minute,” Skerlos said. “It was kind of a hot mess, but we locked in.”
But at 5:30 am, the focus shifted.
Among all of the HOSA competitors there, seven, plus their staff adviser, Andrea Adams, were attending from Community High School. The members boarded the bus in a sea of students from all over the district, sticking together as a pack.
Members Sophie Banta, Thomas Radesky, Ian Rae, Isabella Santiago, and Andrea Skerlos competed in Health Education, where they advocated and went to middle schools about the anti-vaping movement.
On the other hand, Neil Carlin and Calliope Gilroy competed in CPR & first aid the next day.
With CHS being an alternative high school with an expanding extracurricular scene, the moment felt important for many students. While many of the rival teams arrived with years of practice, preparation and established reputations, CHS brought a small, first-time group that had already defied expectations by advancing past regionals.
Before the state championships in April, they had to first compete in the Region 6 finals at Brighton High School, which, for many, was their first HOSA competition. Neither group of students was sure that they would even make it past this stage, due to feeling that the judges had not rated their presentation well, but they performed better than expected.
“We weren’t super confident in our performance at regionals,” Sophie Bants, a junior at CHS and co-vice president of CHS’s HOSA chapter, said. “So it was pretty shocking when we found out that we made it to states.”
After a 4-hour-long bus ride to Grand Traverse Resort, the HOSA members disembarked from the bus, stretched their legs and prepared for the competition that they’d spent months preparing and working towards.
The Health Education group had been rehearsing and memorizing their speech, a rundown of their outreach, for weeks at that point, but they needed one final memorization session right before their presentation to deliver their best possible presentation.
“We were all standing in a circle, facing the opposite way from each other, reciting our speeches to a wall,” Skerlos said. “It was super weird, but I think it was effective.”
The health education group’s presentation, which they brought to the middle schools, included a multitude of games for the middle schoolers to engage in during the interactive presentation. Additionally, one of the group’s members would dress in a vape box during presentations to help them learn in a fun and engaging way. The reason they chose this topic was that one of the members had struggled in middle school with the dangers of vaping and felt the need to do the outreach and make a difference to stop others from doing the same. It was truly a full circle moment; it helped the group teach the students from the heart and put their best foot forward for the competition.
“I loved the outreach that the CHS HOSA team did. I thought it was really important,” Adams said. “The way they presented was really thoughtful, and it sent a really good message to younger kids.”
The next day, Carlin and Gilroy performed in CPR and First Aid, where they had to do a hands-on simulation in front of judges, along with taking a test to demonstrate their knowledge.
“The simulation was also fun,” Carlin said. “HOSA is really useful because CPR and first aid have a lot of skills that are relevant for anybody, and it’s really nice to learn the skills for things that you can use day to day.”
To cool off after their events, they enjoyed a day at the pool at the Great Wolf Lodge, the hotel at which AAPS HOSA members stayed.
“Going to the water park and playing basketball was really fun,” Carlin said. “[I enjoyed] the opportunity that HOSA gave us to go on these trips and do fun things as a group.”
The HOSA chapter at CHS is currently tight-knit and quite small, which contributes to a sense of closer friendship and collaboration, according to Banta.
“It’s very personal, and everyone knows each other really well,” Banta said. “ I would say we all feel really close. It was super awesome to be able to connect with the other members of the group.”
However, they hope to increase their membership for next year. According to Banta, the club is easy to join, fun and looks good on college applications, no matter what career path members want to go down.
“It’s super fun and super inclusive. The group will take you in no matter what grade you are, no matter how much experience you have, even if you’re just slightly interested, even if you don’t want to have a health career,” Banta said. “There’s really no harm in joining, and you can kind of take it to as intense of a level as you want to. You don’t even have to compete if you don’t want to. So there’s no pressure when you join, and it’s just super, super fun.”
Despite not advancing to the next stage of the HOSA competition, the members are happy with their performance and look forward to the next bright steps at CHS HOSA.
