Juniors Nick Steers, Axel Larsen and senior Colin Roethlisberger placed third in the state championship for DECA. After their performance, they were chosen to take part in the national championship at Atlanta in early May.

DECA stands for the Distributive Education Clubs of America, in which students participate in local and global events that test their abilities in communication, cooperation, marketing and overall business operations.

“You get to learn useful life skills about business and leadership. I consider myself to be a leader,” Steers said.

In the DECA competitions, there are two events that groups participate in. One of the events is called the Competitive Event.

The Competitive Event features different tasks such as two tests and two role-plays in which generic business skills are applied to a situation given.

The topics often talked about are finance, marketing, sports entertainment and tourism.

“At state, Colin (Roethlisberger) and I were given a case study for one of our role-plays. We had a case study of a shoe store and three new shoe lines in which we had to market.

We had a half hour to create a marketing scheme on how to sell the shoes by meeting specific performance standards given. We then had to present this idea to a judge for around ten minutes,” Steers said.

Larsen, a top three performer, had a case study of luxury homes and was given certain standards he had to achieve based on his marketing techniques.

“These case studies really help me gain experience in the business world, help me become a leader and help me with my nerves,” Larsen said.

For the writing portion, the group of Steers, Larsen and Roethlisberger had to write an extensive paper about a sports and entertainment marketing event. For their portion, they chose to market Raging Waves.

“We first had to creative surveys about Raging Waves and distribute them. After we got the results, we had to write a 30 page paper about our results and we had to give a plan of execution. The goal was to increase profit and increase the amount of season passes bought,” Steers said.

This group has been extremely successful because of the creativity and originality that resides in each individual member of DECA,.originality fuels our club.   “We always do something original that stands out to judges. You have to be really good at smooth talking your way through the competitions,” Larsen said.