The Madison College Chapter of BPA hosted their first annual dodgeball tournament last week. More than 50 spectators and participants were present at the event which raised over $125 in donations.

Eight teams of five students each competed in a “March Madness” bracket style tournament in an effort to be crowned champion. In the end, the student team “Bill’s Ballerz” from the Madison College Fitness Center were the undisputed victors of the day.

After a hard fought battle for the first place trophy, “Bill’s Ballerz” came out on top against “Hit Me If You Can” who took second place. In the alternative bracket, “RISE: Really Into Smashing Enemies” secured a third place win over “Native American Student Association” (NASA).

The trophy was gifted to BPA as a donation from the STEM Center, which created the award using the 3-D printers in their office.

BPA held this fundraising event in order to raise money for next year’s 2025 National Leadership Conference (NLC) which will be held in Orlando, Florida.

Last year, the Student Activities Board (SAB) voted to reduce organizational budgets by 14.9% across the board, which includes the Executive Leadership Team who manages club funding.

The SAB is a 10-member group that is responsible for managing and distributing funds from the Student Activity Fee to support Student Life at Madison College. Because organizational budgets exceeded projected revenues by $201,000, all members of the SAB agreed to a reduction of funding to remain fiscally conservative with student fees.

However, in the Fall 2023 term SAB held a referendum in which students voted to restructure and equalize the fee for students, so national travel became more of a possibility again for student groups. But BPA Treasurer Emily Cauthen didn’t want to take any chances with available funding.

“I think [fundraising] is important so we can learn how to be self-sustainable because you don’t know if there’s going to be changes with the available funding from the school,” explained Cauthen.

BPA recently celebrated numerous wins at the 2024 State Leadership Conference and twelve students will be advancing to the 2024 NLC held in Chicago.

The BPA officer team of Mack Cartsens, Kai Brito, Emily Cauthen, Cansin Ozsoy and Michael Malone encourage students to join BPA even if they are not in a business program! Stop by the Business and Accounting Lab for more information.

* Editor’s note: The writer of this article, Kai Brito, is also the Vice President of Business Professionals of America (BPA).