At the end of February, 47 students from Potomac Falls piled onto a bus to head to the DECA State Leadership Conference (SLC) in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
According to deca.org, DECA is “an international nonprofit student organization that prepares high school and college students for careers in business, especially marketing, finance, hospitality, and management.” The organization has over 300,000 members across the United States, making it one of the world’s largest CTSOs (Career & Technical Student Organizations).
At PFHS, DECA is a club that is meant to improve business and marketing skills through optional leadership competitions, working at school stores, etc. It is also a club that helps students stand out in applications.
SLC is a yearly, multi-day event that thousands of VA DECA students attend. At SLC, there are various events students can participate and compete in such as roleplay, case studies, written presentations, leadership activities, and prepared events. These can be solo or in teams.
Roleplay, one of the more popular events, is when a student is given a prompt as they enter a room and is then given a fixed amount of time to prepare and respond to the prompt in front of a judge. Students are rated on their performance and given a test score based on a 100 question test they previously completed.
Seniors Cadyn Sohn and Rania Khokhar competed in a prepared event where they presented on Store Based Enterprise. “We had to prepare a presentation and present for a judge. We practiced on Friday with notecards and our advisors for our presentation on Saturday,” said Sohn.
Once students arrived at Virginia Beach, they attended an opening ceremony at night where a former NFL player-turned motivational speaker spoke to attendees. They also spent the night rehearsing and perfecting their events.
On Saturday, competition day, attendees presented their events from 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. In between performances, students were able to have free time to explore local shops and the beach. Saturday night was the first award ceremony for roleplay and test events. Seniors Aubrey Karnes, Amanda Gobeille, Helena Gabrial, and Michael Strein received awards, among others from Potomac Falls.
“I think the overall experience was great and it brought a wonderful conclusion to my four years as a DECA competitor,” said Karnes.
The following morning, there was a final award ceremony and the closing ceremony at 8:30 a.m. This was for prepared events and overall awards for roleplay.
On Sunday, PFHS students bussed home with multiple student qualifiers for the International Career Development Conference (ICDC) that is taking place in April in Atlanta, Georgia.