At 5 a.m. on Saturday, Jan. 4, around 20 Deca groups boarded a bus to Copperas Cove to compete in the district meet in the hopes of earning scores high enough from the judges to send them to State.

Deca is a club for future business people to advance their skills in marketing, entrepreneurship, financial literacy and business world basics. The groups competing in the meets put these skills to use through working on their semester-long project.

“Our project was to find existing business that might have been sort of under serving a demographic and basically come up with a plan to fix that,” senior Deca member Nicole Messner said. “Our category was sports and entertainment so we had to find a business that met those qualifications.  Basically you do a ton of research and write a 30-page paper about your findings and proposed plan and put together a visual presentation.”

After working since the first day of school with their faculty advisor, Dana Jones, the competition team was ready to present their projects. The competition is a huge affair complete with an awards ceremony.

“Basically you come dressed all professional and ready to present to a judge then you get you presentation time and a room number,” Messner said.  “You wait until it is your turn then check in at your room. When it’s time, you walk in and shake your judges hand and begin your presentation. There is an awards ceremony for everyone that advance once all presentations are completed.”

Messner and her partners, seniors Lulla Kiwinda and Samantha Casey, were one of the two unfortunate groups that didn’t advance to state.  Messner cites the objectivity of their judge as their reason for not advancing.

“Honestly, I don’t think we advanced because one of our partners couldn’t make it, and it’s just better to have everyone,” Messner said. “The main reason, though, is that the judge just didn’t like our project before we even walked in. It’s purely based off opinion.”

With so many groups advancing to state, however, the rest of Deca will be spending the next few weeks preparing for State at the end of the month by fixing errors and enhancing their visual aids. For Messner and her partners, however, this defeat marks the end of the road for the three seniors.

“This was my first year in Deca, and it was a great experience,” Messner said. “I am so glad I got to participate and I feel a lot more prepared to go study business at college now that I know what to expect.”