DECA Regionals

DECA+Regionals

Madalyn Berry, Reporter

The Tower would like to congratulate the John Adams eagles that participated in the DECA regionals competition on January 12,2023.
Taking place at the National Guard Armory in South Bend,IN, thirteen eagle participants gave their all to the judges and left no crumbs. Their success won the Chris Robertson Highest Percentage School/Team award against all the South Bend schools and local highschools!
Overall, ten eagles qualified for the DECA Indiana State Career Development Conference and Competition taking place at Indianapolis Marriott Downtown. The event will take place on March 5-7. For the individual awards, three took the overall highest score in their event; Lois Carr- Junior Retail Merchandising, Andres Cervantes- Junior Human Resources Management, Jgudalaupe Cervera- Freshman Principles of Marketing. Two eagles take an honorable mention coming in close second;Owen Connelly- Junior Entrepreneurship, and Ariel Hernandez- Junior Marketing Communications. In addition, third place went to Rachel Bell- Sophomore Principles of Hospitality and Tourism,and fourth place to both Diego Pachelo- Senior Human Resources and Management, and Brandon Davidson- Freshman and Charles Mangum Sophomore in Entrepreneurship for the Team Event.
All ten participants qualified for State with the hope of making it to Nationals in Orlando in April 2023. However, making it into the top four is not easy. Not only do the competitors have to dress the part, they have to use out of the box thinking and fast planning to entice the judges. This key technique known as a role play, the competitors are sent to a planning room where they will need to come up with a new product or idea in ten minutes. The only thing given is a pencil and some note cards to write out your plan. Once the ten minutes are up the competitors anxiously stand up with the hopes of impressing the judges. When they leave the room they take on a new persona, they are not highschoolers anymore, they are now business personals promoting a new product or idea. After the planning room the competitors go to the final room, the judges room. There they will impress the judges with their idea, in hopes that it’s better than their opponents. After all business personals completed their role play, the crowning of awards begins. Two components go into the grading scale, role play quality and a 100 question test all competitors are required to take a week before the competition. Both the role play score and test score are combined for the overall placement in the competition. Seeing that the Adams DECA team won overall best out of all the schools there is exciting to see what all they do at state.