This year’s annual area competition will take place on Jan. 10, 2025, at Snohomish High School. Students will compete with their performance indicators based on their specific areas of study in hopes to make it on stage, advancing them to state competition.
Lake Stevens High School Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA) competitors take practice tests, conduct mock competition roleplays and study up on key concepts to broaden their general knowledge in their categories.
DECA competitions are a real-life business situation where students use their studied knowledge in categories such as marketing, hospitality, finance, apparel, food and many more to compete and demonstrate their skills. The most common form of competition is roleplay. Competitors have multiple resources to succeed with returning advisors David Marques, Tom Mollison and Jenifer LaCoursiere, and the newest addition to the Lake Stevens school district, Lindsey Rodriguez.
“If you’re doing a roleplay, then you get 10 minutes to prepare, and you get like a prompt. You read that prompt and prepare like any notes you want, and then you get 10 minutes to present to a judge, and that’s for roleplays,” junior Officer Amanda Pfiester said.
Lake Sevens has a history of taking a large group of students who advance onto state and national level competitions. This year, 97 students will be competing at the area competition. To get students prepared, officers and advisors are coming up with creative ways to study.
“Jan. 8, we are going to bring in people from our community, adults from our community, to act as mock judges,” Advisor Lindsey Rodregueiz said.
This mock panel is one of the many things that give Lake Stevens DECA a competitive edge over other schools. Mock judges are volunteers from the community who judge competitors on how well they use their performance indicators in their solutions.
Also, judges have a list of 21st Century Skills that students are expected to meet during the presentation. These include things like clear and concise speaking, eye contact and body posture. In regard to meeting prep, officers are hosting activities and constantly planning on how to get returning members and new members prepared for competitions.
“We are making meetings more about competition because I think that’s what people are there for, and where they can really improve, because there’s only so little you can do on your own, when you have people around you that can help you prepare and do role plays with you. It’s really beneficial,” Pfiester said.
Lake Stevens DECA has been working hard this year to gain new members to join the club and compete. The state is sectioned into 11 areas dividing up the schools. Lake Stevens is in Area one, which is known to have tough competition.
Lake Stevens has had the largest chapter in its area for two years in a row, bringing in over 200 members this school year. The advisor and officer team are goal-setting for competition.
“My goals are to get at least half of our competitors to state,” senior President Isabel Tibbits said.
The officer and advisor teams are committed to setting ambitious goals for their chapter this year.
With Rodriguez bringing in DECA knowledge compiled from other school districts and the combination of a completely new officer team, Lake Stevens DECA competitors are going into this season prepared to leave their mark on this competition.
