Hamilton DECA Districts Recap

Dec 20

Dec 20 Hamilton DECA Districts Recap

Photos submitted by Hamilton DECA.

Natalie Olson

Saturday, December 14 marked this year's DECA District 6 competition. For DECA competitors, Districts is their first opportunity to share the skills they have been carefully cultivating since September. Competitors have to prepare in a couple different ways for the different aspects of competition.

DECA Competition Overview

The first part of the competition is the 100 question test which takes place at Hamilton the week before districts and often covers content that is taught in classes such as marketing, accounting, and personal finance. There are several test options spanning from finance to hospitality to marketing, each with its own unique vocabulary. Students spend the first few months of the school year using resources such as past year’s tests and test prep Tuesdays after school to prepare for the test. They also have the option to take online practice tests through the AnswerWrite system provided by Wisconsin DECA. The results of these tests are recorded and overall our chapter took a grand total of 521 tests—a whopping 96 more than the next highest chapter. There is also an optional economics test competitors can take. If students place in the top three overall, they earn a spot to state on top of the spots given to our chapter based on our membership.

The second part of the competition is the two in-person role-plays. These are completed on the day of districts. Competitors have the option to be in a principles event, an individual series event, or a team event. For individual events, students are given a real-world, business-related situation and are given 10 minutes to prepare information to present to a judge in 10 minutes covering a total of five performance indicators. Each situation is unique to the category and has certain performance indicators (aka talking points) that students must hit to score well. Principles events are reserved for underclassmen who are first year competitors and have four performance indicators. Team events have 30 minutes to prepare and a total of seven performance indicators to hit. All three scores—the test and two role plays—are averaged to get the students final score which determines their place.

The Day of Competition

This year for Hamilton students, the day started at 6:45 a.m. when the bus left the Hamilton parking lot to venture to Racine Case High School—where Districts take place every year. Upon arrival, the chapters met in the gym for the opening session where they sent out room assignments for every category’s role-plays. Students then complete their role plays any time between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.

Lunch starts at 11 a.m. so students can go to lunch as soon as they finish their events. Once all categories have finished, the competitors wait in the gym for awards to start. This is a great time to meet peers from other schools in the area and build connections throughout the organization.

At awards, competitors can earn medals for earning one of the top test scores, or by placing in the top two for role-plays for each judge. The amount of medals varies for every category based on the number of total competitors and the number of judges. Competitors can also earn a plaque and a spot to State by being in the top three overall across all aspects of competition.

Results

Hamilton DECA received a grand total of 175 awards across 106 competitors. They earned 30 first through third plaques and 145 competitive excellence medals. This sets a record for the chapter and beats last year’s totals by 25 medals and 3 plaques.

Hamilton DECA will have 43 competitors advancing on to the State Career Development Conference (SCDC) in February.

Below is a list of all competitors attending SCDC:

Aadhitya Balaji

Aanya Ranasaria

Achintya Bhan

Akshara Sivakumar

Alex Yan

Alex Ghere

Arshia Parashar

Austin Mathews

Ben LaCroix

Chinmayi Swaminathan