dOut of the 31 AHS students that attended the State Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA) competition held in Norfolk, Virginia this past weekend, four of them received bids to attend the national competition.

Senior Sahnun Mohamed, along with sophomores Joon Lee, Jae Min Kim and James Terrel all received bids to attend the National DECA competition, which will be held in Orlando, Florida.

Unlike many typical club competitions, DECA, which is centered around business and marketing, has competitions that can be either individual or team-oriented.

All four winners participated in role playing events, with Mohamed participating in retail merchandising, Kim and Terrel participating in business and law, and Lee participating in finance.

“In a role play [event] they’re given a marketing situation like a case study and they have 10 minutes to review that and come up with their plan, and then they go into [a room] and they’re judged on how well they meet specific [criteria]. So they have two of those, then they average all three scores together,” marketing teacher and DECA supervisor Stephanie Harmony said.

Participants also have the option of participating in a written event.

“[The written event is] done over multiple weeks and months here at school, and then they put together a whole presentation, and present that to a judge. That can be anything from community service to advertising campaigns to market research. The written event has been comprised of the written project, which is usually about 30 pages long, and their presentation to the judge.”

Students from all across the state came to compete in the event, so for many who attended, staying busy was not hard to do.

“The day of competition is usually very hectic and there is a lot of waiting involved so since Katie [Bui] and I have more outgoing personalities, we would talk to people around us and make friends that way,” senior Banna Gebremichael said.

The success of the DECA chapter over the years has been somewhat difficult to adequately calculate, due to the uniqueness of the competition.

“It’s not necessarily like a basketball game where you can go out and scout the other competition. You really don’t know anything that you’re up against,” Harmony said. “So I would really have to say that this year, like any other year, the kids that competed really did their best and represented us well.”