Allen DECA had 28 students attend the District 7 Career Development Conference in Haltom City, Texas, and 23 members qualified for the state conference in San Antonio on Feb. 25 to continue competing in business and marketing events. The Allen DECA was also awarded Rookie Chapter of the Year.

For junior and DECA president Jenna Wilson, this will be her second trip to state. Last year, she also qualified for the International level.

“It is really exciting. It is also kind of nerve wracking though because of all the pressure from making it last year,” Wilson said. “But it is really fun to get to spend time with everybody else so it is really exciting to see your hard work pay off.”

The DECA competitions consist of role plays, written events and pre-planned presentations. The club members are grouped into either a finance, business marketing or hospitality cluster, and compete in competitions related to their specific topic. In role plays, competitors are given a business related or financial situation and must present a solution. The judge plays the role of the client.

“My competition was hospitality and tourism professional selling. My specific one was one that I got to prepare ahead of time,” Wilson said. “So basically, what I had to do was give a sales presentation on a hotel and convince the judge that was grading me to come and have his conference at my hotel.”

Senior and DECA treasurer Keerthy Benny was part of the financial cluster. Her competition was based around financial consulting, where she has to offer college savings options to the judge, who played the role of a new parent. Along with the role play, Benny had to complete an exam with 100 finance-related questions.

“We meet up at least once or twice a week and have study sessions,” Benny said. “We helped each other out and went through role plays and had to come in a week before and took a test [regarding our subject]. We took several practice tests to prepare.”

After the state competition in February, the top seven competitors of each event qualify for the international conference, which will be held in Tennessee this year.

“[DECA] has made me more of a people person,” Benny said. “I feel like it has really trained me for the future.”