The South Lyon combined DECA chapter with members from both high schools performed extremely well at the State Career and Development Conference (SCDC) in Detroit. 66 students made the trip to Detroit, to compete with almost 5500 other students.
During the Grand Awards Session Saturday morning, 35 were recognized as finalists and 14 won to become State Champions receiving the coveted DECA Glass. The winners qualified to compete at the International Career and Development Conference in Atlanta, GA on April 24 – April 29.
Also known as Distributive Education Clubs of America, junior Nya Anoop describes DECA as “a business club that prepares high schoolers for their careers like business, finance, marketing, and entrepreneurship.”
Lots of preparation goes into DECA as the teams conference approaches. Avery Drummond, a senior at South Lyon East, described what she is doing to prepare for the competition, “Me and my partner were getting our poster together, writing our script. [Our project] is about the school store so we’re really expanding our customer market. We are just getting everything ready for the judges at States.”
Anoop’s preparation for DECA is fairly similar. “I’m doing a written event too. So I’m prepping our integrative marketing pitch. And so we’ve perfected our scripts and finished up our poster,” Anoop said, excited for States.
The DECA organization describes the goals of the club on their website: “A powerful instructional component, DECA brings the classroom to life by empowering the teacher-advisor to make learning relevant with educational programs that integrate into classroom instruction, apply learning, connect to business and promote competition. The successful integration of each of these four interconnected components, also part of DECA’s guiding principles, results in a strong program that produces college- and career-ready students.”
“I’m the VP of marketing communications. I’m supposed to post on the social media, but aside from that I’m a board member so I just help out,” said Anoop about her role in DECA.
Drummond has a very different role in the club which she explained, “I run the school store. My event is in the school store so me and my partner set the customer market and pick up the common trends and we train our employees and how we promote our different products. My partner did a written event and we’re just presenting it at States.”
ICDC is the International Career Development Conference, which is the step after states. “So if you make it past States you get to go to . It’s in Atlanta this year, and you get to go there and hopefully win for your club,” explained Drummond.
“My favorite part of DECA is all the people in the club, we all as a club are very close in a way, we all work together. I know like other people from other written events were helping me with my written project even though we weren’t in the same category. We all just help each other out,” Drummond said with a big smile.
“At each conference we have to wear our suits and blazers and very professional attire, and so when you go around, like say it’s Detroit for this [conference], when you’re on the people mover, you just see a sea of teenageers in their business suits and everything, and it is like an insane and surreal experience seeing like people our age acting professional. It’s like a glimpse into the future, it’s kind of crazy,” described Anoop about her favorite parts of DECA.
South Lyon’s DECA team’s most recent conference was in Detroit. This conference was very important to the team because it determines which group/ schools will make it to states.
“This year, we dare you to Go The Extra—the extra mile, the extra step, the extra level on the path to achieving your college and career goals” stated DECA on their website .
Drummond admitted excitedly, “I’ve never been to States before. Last year I went to ICDC for an academy, but I’ve never been to DECA States. Everybody always talks about how fun it is to run around Detroit and we do a lot of activities as a group so I’m excited. And we get to dress in business casual and adult-ish for the weekend.”
Anoop agreed with her with a big smile, agreeing that Drummond’s statement is arguably the “highlight of a States weekend.”
