DECA is preparing to compete in the district meet on Jan. 24 at the Irving Convention Center. The competitions last from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and there are 59 events. This is the first time the Hebron chapter will compete in virtual and in-person events. 

“We’re bringing [159] students to the competition and our goal is to get as many to state,” DECA sponsor Sherry Gowarty said. “It’s time for our students to shine and [to] prepare with them in [a] business setting and [teach them] problem solving.”

In the last two years, the club has doubled in members. There will be four buses taking all the members to the competition.   

“I think, this year, a big struggle we had is having a huge chapter,” vice president of roleplay Esha Gajula said. “That’s a lot when it comes to assigning each person a competition [and] making sure that everything is organized well. It’s really important to give everyone a competition they want, and one that they will excel in. I think we will be really successful at district.”

Roleplay is a competition with many events in it, ranging from marketing to human resources. These competitions are done in front of judges and on the spot, and events last for 20 minutes.

“We had mock competitions last semester,” DECA president Sanjitha Venkata said. “We’ve done our regular meetings. We make sure to have some aspects of competitions, just so that people can understand what actual competitions would look like. For roleplay kids, we would have mock roleplays.”

Written events are prepared beforehand and are presented to judges at the meet. The event consists of presentations, essays and research papers. 

“For written kids, they had their separate meetings with the written event vice presidents,” Venkata said. “They’ve gotten a lot of examples from past ICDC [International Career Development Conference] competitors because we had a lot of them go last year. This year, we started a YouTube channel with tutorials of a bunch of things DECA-related.”

The state competition will be in Fort Worth March 9–11 and the international meet will take place in Florida April 22–25. 

“I think a large part of DECA is not even about business knowledge, finance or entrepreneurship; it’s about being confident about what you’re saying, even if you don’t know it,” Gajula said. “I think that is the key part to acing district and state. That’s how you get to internationals. It’s about being confident in yourself. When you walk into the room, nothing else matters except you and what you are talking about.”