On the morning of January eighth nearly two hundred DECA participants from West entered the Crown Plaza. The mass of students broke off in search of the room where their event would be held. Each student completed a rigorous one hundred question test as well as one to two role-plays pertaining to their category (Ex. Retail merchandising, food marketing…etc.) Once a student completed the test and all role-plays they were able to relax in a room upstairs to eagerly await the award ceremony. At this time Ciera Burch, a senior, was asked about her thoughts on the competition, her response was “It’s fun…just really long.”

Finally, the time came for all students to be ushered into the Grand Ballroom for the award ceremony. The coordinators of the event began with the team events; the winners were almost entirely comprised of Cherry Hill East and Eastern Regional High School students (much to the chagrin of many West scholars). Next came the principles events (which are only available to first year DECA students and only has one role-play), followed by the normal events. At that point grand processions of West students were called up to stage. Many West Students were in fact qualifiers, and there were quite few were winners in their category. The students kept the energy and excitement up, cheering for each of the winners from our school.

Once all the awards had been given, the students piled onto the buses and arrived back at the school at around seven o’clock.

After all was said and done Ms. Minutolo, business teacher and DECA advisor had this to say, “We’re very proud of all our DECA members and especially because this year we had a record braking number of qualifiers.” One of the state qualifiers, Anna Scarfo, had this to say about her experience, “I’m very excited to go to states; I’ll make sure to practice a lot before the next competition rolls around and Mrs. Melleby is great teacher and she prepared me for the competition.”

The regional competition was a resounding success and I wish all of the state qualifiers luck in the next stage of the competition.