By COLE REIF
Great Bend Post
In the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) in Kansas, the conference provides a leadership opportunity for juniors in high school. The conference consists of Great Bend, Hays, Garden City, Liberal and Dodge City and each school selects four representatives to participate.
One of the Great Bend representatives, junior Ian Premer, spoke before the USD 428 Board of Education Wednesday on the importance of modeling leadership characteristics each day.
"They talked a lot about listening and being locked in," said Premer. "In school I don't know if I really learned that. I thought it was important with the eye contact, body language and that you're really locked in all the time. We talked about what being an uncommon leader really is. You can't be afraid to do things that others won't because that's what a leader really has to do."
The 20 WAC Leadership students meet throughout the year with a facilitator discussing multiple topics. Great Bend junior Reese Bullard is another leadership member and she valued the discussion on finding your "gift."
"Everyone has a gift," said Bullard. "Once you find your gift, and you live in it, everything goes from there. You can't live in someone else's gift. The way the presenter went about it was saying if you wake up unhappy every day, that's not your gift and you have not found your gift. Finding that value, why you're doing things and your gift was really important to me."
MacKenzie Lindberg and Hayden Kelly are the other two WAC Leadership representatives from GBHS.