Three students from Greeley West DECA have qualified for state and will join approximately 3500 other kids from different schools in Colorado Springs in February.
DECA is a business club here at Greeley West that focuses on business and marketing The way they compete is by roleplaying different scenarios as if they were an actual employer of a business. Apart from roleplays, they also take a 100-question test online a week before the district event. If DECA students do well at the district level, then they qualify for state. If state goes well, they will make it to nationals which will be held in Anaheim, California.
The three students who state were sophonore Reymundo Ocampo Flores, senior Adin McPherson, and junior Jaziel Rivera.
Flores joined DECA this year and focuses on marketing events. Flores is excited to compete at state as it runs in his family. Hhis sisters have qualified for state as well so he plans to surpass his sisters and come out on top. Dufault gives Flores high praise as Flores is his first student in nine years to come out with an 80 out of 100 on the test, and came out first in the district competition. In terms of preparation, Flores isn’t a big fan of preparing. He just wings it and hopes for the best. “I don’t really prepare I just wing it. That’s how I did it this time so I’ll do it again,” Flores said.
Dufault does help his students prepare for the competition. Every Thursday morning, they meet in his classroom and study and go through different roleplays and get them ready. Dufault prepares them mentally and physically. He teaches them what to know and what to mark down on a sheet of paper and present, as they are only given 10 minutes of prep time to solve and present. This matters as at state they are graded out 300 points in total, 100 of those points being from a test, and the rest from 2 roleplays they do. “We go through role play and study what students do for roleplays and get them ready not only mentally but physically, know what to mark down on a sheet of paper,” Dufault said.
The competition will be held in February, and if all goes well they compete in ICDC, an international conference where students from all over the world from different countries come in and compete.
