From Sunday, February 22, to Tuesday, February 24, twenty five Lenape students competed at the State Level for DECA. DECA, formally known as Distributive Education Clubs of America, is a competition in which students from across the nation compete to show their skill in a business category of their choosing.

The entirety of Lenape’s DECA chapter competed in the Regional Competition in January of this year. Of those members, a little less than half of them, 25 to be specific, advanced to the State competition. Both were held at the Crowne Plaza in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

Participants can sign up for either a team event with another partner, or choose to compete solo. The topic is up to their discretion, and ranges from Travel and Tourism to Principles of Accounting. A full list can be found at NJ DECA’s website, www.njdeca.org.

A typical DECA competition is comprised of a written test and a role-play event. The written test is a timed test of typically 100 multiple choice questions that must be completed within sixty minutes. The role-play event is done at the venue and is what differentiates DECA from other business competitions.

The role-play is an improvisation event, similar to an in-class essay during English class. The only difference is that the competitor presents their answer instead of writing and submitting it. During the competition, the participant, or participants if a team event was chosen, receives a prompt that asks for them to assume the role of an expert and their objective. The prompt could ask you for a marketing strategy for selling more sports tickets, or even suggested renovations to a series of hotel chains to appeal to a certain demographic.

“It was a good experience, and I felt like it would help me a lot later in life because the role-plays forced me to think on my feet.”                              – James Eigenbrood (’16)

Of the 25 students that made it to the State Competition, 12 made it to the finalist round, meaning that they were one of the top 24 in the state. A full list of all the students and their awards can be found at the end.

Sadly, none of Lenape’s students made it to the next step up, the National competition.

Despite this, Mr. De Julius, the club advisor, said that he was ”proud of them all” for their performance.

The students that Participated:

Dahlia Bailey, Saurav Bose, Emily Brady, Ryan Cassidy, Sakshi Chopra, Saransh Chopra, James Eigenbrood, Eric Fei, Daniel Fraley, Camille Franklin, Zachary Garberman, Neil Mathur, Christopher Mickel, Emily Mohnacs, Kavi Munjal, Sameera Polavarapu, Samantha Sorid, Don Suh, Keval Thosani, Jacob Turetsky, Roshan Vasoya, Michael Williams, Colin Wright, Nathan Yezril, and Jeffrey Yoon