Students Compete at Deca State

Photo by Kaitlyn Stratman

The DECA Kansas state competition took place earlier this week on March 4,5,6 and 7. Students from high schools travelled to the Marriott in Overland Park including around 180 East students to compete in marketing related testing, series events, projects and role plays. They competed in teams or single in two rounds of roleplay or teams of three in projects.

The top three in each area are given the opportunity to travel to Anaheim, California in April to compete in the International DECA competition. There are currently 24 East juniors and seniors going to internationals.

“I feel like more kids were represented on stage this year than they have in the past,” marketing teacher and DECA advisor Mercedes Rasmussen said. “We usually have around the same qualify for internationals, but overall they did an excellent job.”

On Monday night, March 6, the mini awards were announced, highlighting the best performing students in exam scores and role play scores. East competitors received a total of 39 awards for juniors and seniors. The complete list of all awards is below.

Tuesday March 7, was the complete award show, in which the DECA conference runners combine the testing score with both role play scores or project scores. Then, depending on the amount of competitors in an area, they were ranked. Some are are 1-10 and others are only ranked first and second. These will also be listed below.

Big victories for East DECA include two first place awards for advertising campaigns and promotion plan. As well as first place in FTDM for Jack Furla and Reser Hall and all top three spots in the MTDM area were filled by East competitors. There were 50 total awards for East DECA, not including the mini awards.

“This group of students I have this year, juniors and seniors combined are an awesome group of kids, I am so proud of them,” Rasmussen said.