On Thursday, January 11, 66 DECA members headed to Ramapo College to compete in the North East District Conference for a spot in the State Conference. Out of the NVOT students who competed, 26 qualified for the State Conference in Atlantic City from March 4 to March 6.
According to DECA advisor Antonio Marino, this was the highest number of students that have qualified for states in recent years. “The kids definitely prepared well, stepped up well, competed well, so I was really happy,” Marino said.
At the North East District Conference, DECA members competed against students from schools from across Bergen County. There are two of types of competitive events students participated in: role-plays and case studies and prepared events. For the role-play and case study events, students are given a prompt or scenario where they need to act as anyone from a customer to a business owner. They are given 10 minutes to plan how to address the points of the prompt while maintaining formal business conduct. Students in prepared events delivered presentations they made ahead of the conference.
For Marino, the role-play events in particular allow students to apply what they have learned in their business classes. “Everything we’re trying to teach in the classroom comes together in those role-plays,” Marino said. “It’s more meaningful, you know, face to face with somebody. You can’t really fake that.”
Students who qualified for the State Conference will be taking on role-play events in front of business professionals and giving presentations across different areas including business management and administration, finance, hospitality and tourism, and marketing.
At the State Conference, the NVOT students who qualified will be among thousands of high school students across competing in hopes of advancing to the International Career Development Conference (ICDC) in Anaheim, California. Senior Krystal Kymn, who qualified in the Accounting Event, made it to ICDC in her sophomore year and hopes to advance again this year. “This is my last year, so I was happy to qualify, and I want to keep going forward because I want to go as far as I can in my last year,” Kymn said.
The full list of NVOT students who qualified for the State Conference is as follows:
Ethan Anderson
Charlotte Atalla
Isabella Benasillo
Anna Bergelson
Jun Chun
Jack Drucker
Peter Fowley
Arjun Gandhi
Ysabella Genova
Mike Greenberg
Evan Hwang
Inho Kee
Krystal Kymn
Chloe Lee
Sabrina Mercado
Alex Orecchio
Brian Park
Katie Park
Chloe Parsi
Joowon Shin
Blake Sommer
Christopher Sylvester
Reese Taplin
Anand Vaghasia
Dylan Woo
Erin Yoon