Every year, members of WS’s premier marketing club arrive at DECA Districts.
DECA at WS welcomes all marketing students to quarterly meetings, field trips, community service, and competitions. A small portion of club members choose to compete, and those that do, adore it.
To participate, the student picks a category (such as Business Management and Administration, or Travel and Tourism), tests in that category, and participates in a role play.
“You’re placed in a real life business
situation, asked to solve a problem and pitch the solutions to a judge,” said Marketing
teacher Sam Jonsson.
The competitions span the year: District Leadership Conference, or DLC, in the fall, States in the winter, and possibly International Career Development Conference, or Nationals in late spring. For competitors this year, the journey began at Districts, held in early November at Lake Braddock.
Freshman competitor Kareese Akinloba was nervous, but thinks she performed soundly.
“I wasn’t sure if the role-play was going to be like the preparation we did in class,” said Akinloba. “It was a lot to adjust to, but ended up going well. Definitely something I’d do again next year.”
Even if her two part test and role-play score do not place top three to move on, Akinloba and others can join a team event or do work to attend States this March. Certain DECA students also took this route: instead of competing at Districts, they are simply choosing one of the events aforementioned and heading to States.
As an alternative, they helped organize DLC by taking students to and from the stations that included check-in, preparation, and the judges’ cubicles. WS DECA member Atoosa Haghani took this path, and believes that the overall, the event went well.
“As a competitor last year, it was really organized. Helping this year was very chaotic, but it worked,” said Haghani.
Teachers were not anxious about competitor performance, justly so because many placed in their role play, test, or overerall. As veteran member and competitor Alex Sanchez puts it,
“I believe DECA is an organization in which young individuals compete with each other in specific marketing categories, allowing for both a fun and learning experience overall.”