Hamilton DECA Dominates at State
Photo from Hamilton DECA.
Natalie Olson
On February 26, 42 Hamilton students traveled to Lake Geneva to compete in the DECA State Career Development Conference. These students are members of Hamilton’s DECA chapter, a club for students interested in pursuing business careers in the future or who want to develop skills like leadership, problem-solving, and public speaking. Students in DECA attend monthly meetings, hang out at social events, and participate in volunteering opportunities throughout the school year.
DECA also has a very active competition component. The competition is split into three levels, the first being the District-level competition. The state of Wisconsin is split into six districts with Hamilton competing in District 6. At this competition, students take a day trip to Racine Case High School for one Saturday in December. The top three competitors continue on to the state level. Of the 93 students who competed, 42 of them advanced to the State level! This is an impressively high rate compared to other schools considering a lot of our qualifiers were first-time competitors in their areas. Hamilton walked away with a grand total of 137 awards for either their test, role-play 1, roleplay 2, or overall top scores. Congratulations to all who competed!
State is held at the Grand Geneva Resort and Spa, about an hour’s drive from Hamilton. The students arrive Sunday night and are given time to explore the hotel before the competition starts the next day. Monday is full of project presentations for the 20 competitors who decided to compete in those categories. Everyone else attends workshops where they listen to company presentations about what it takes to be a leader or even how they got their business started. In the evening, all competitors take their 100-question test before attending the opening session ceremony.
In years past, the opening session has been largely dominated by keynote speakers. This year, to shake it up, Wisconsin DECA brought in a hypnotist for a live performance! Volunteers were chosen from the audience and brought on stage. Raj Ramanathan, a junior who serves on the Hamilton DECA Board as the VP of community service, was chosen to participate. The audience had an exciting time watching the participants think they were in an orchestra, shout out random thoughts, and magically fall asleep on command. All in all, this was the most entertaining opening session to date.
Tuesday is the most stress-filled day of the competition. On this day, the students do their main competition or their roleplays. During a role play, students are given a business situation related to their category and have ten minutes to prepare their presentation. Then, they move on to another room where they meet with a judge and give their presentation. Some examples of categories are Hospitality and Tourism, Marketing Communications, and Business Law and Ethics.
On Tuesday night, chapters that had students compete in projects attended the formal awards show to find out the results. Hamilton had twelve projects total and nine qualified for the International Career Development Conference (ICDC)! Congratulations project participants!
Following the awards, students have free time until curfew when they can hang out in their hotel rooms, go to the pool, or visit the DECA Dance. The next morning begins with a closing session when students wait in anticipation to discover how they placed overall and if they move on to the next round.
Hamilton is a very decorated chapter and is often regarded as one of the best in Wisconsin. Overall, Hamilton walked away from State with the most awards of any chapter in attendance with a total of 145 awards! The Principles categories, or the first-time competitors, alone brought in 44 awards! For comparison, the next highest chapter brought in 14! Thirty-two students will advance to the next level and attend ICDC in Anaheim, California. Congratulations to all who participated in DECA this year and good luck to the ICDC competitors!
