On Feb. 7, DECA’s district competition took place virtually. With the district results recently becoming public to the school, many newer students have been wondering what DECA is and what the competition is about.

DECA stands for Distributive Education Clubs of America, and is designed to help students with marketing-related careers. Though students have to be enrolled in a marketing class to join, members can learn many career-related skills ranging from hospitality to management. There are also some other skills that DECA helps students improve that do not just correlate with marketing.

“They really sharpen their critical thinking skills, [and] they’re exposed to a lot of real life situations that they might encounter as an adult,” DECA and Marketing instructor Judith Simmons said.

The club is also not GPA based, and members have the chance to earn scholarships from Missouri or national DECA for college.

The DECA competitions, as expected, are also based around marketing. Each student competes in their own desired category for competition, and starts out competing on the district level. For districts, the students must complete a cluster exam and act out what they call a roleplay. 

“We went to the conference room… and filmed ourselves talking through our event,” said DECA state qualifier Macy Jones.

The cluster exam is about 100 questions all pertaining to the category the individual has chosen. The roleplay also has to do with their chosen category, however it is more based around hospitality and how to act professionally towards others. 

“I had to do a quick video session, like I had to pretend to talk to business people and then we had to solve out the situation we were given within a certain amount of time,” explained Cesar Cervantes, another state qualifier.

The competition will then move up to state, which will be taking place this year in Kansas City, Missouri on March 13-15. The top students from each district will be participating. After participating in state, each qualifier will participate in the national competition. The competition will be held in Atlanta, Georgia and is expected to not only have students from across the states, but also from other countries. 

This year all of the state qualifiers from St. Charles High are David Romero, Luc Bourgeade, Katie Black, Ashira Ransom, Macey Hill, Amour Riley, Mariyah Smith, Jonni Rayburn, Lily Blackwood and Mia Oellermann, Owen Chaisitiphol and Louis Reese, Cesar Cervantes, Trent Beskoravany, Tyler Kies, Macy Jones, and Addison Kersting.