DECA Club Sends Six to State Tournament
Earlier this year, three Rivers seniors founded a club with hopes of eventually competing against chapters throughout the region at simulation and writing-based competitions similar to Model United Nations and Debate. As it turns out, the founding members of DECA have already achieved that goal by qualifying for the state competition with a third-place finish at the district level.
Blake Griffith ’17 and Shahen Hagen ’17 qualified for the state tournament in the district competition’s most competitive category – sports and entertainment marketing. The pair finished third out of 30 teams by presenting their plan to market a ticket sales campaign for a Division I athletics program.
“We were asked to create a ticketing structure for an athletic department and come up with ways to not only justify the way we priced them, but also how to market the subscription service we ended up creating,” Blake said. “We went in expecting that we were there for the experience and did not expect to move on to the next stage of the competition. To reach that stage as a first-year program is exciting.”
Two other groups – fellow founding member Rider Tuff ’17 and his partner Andrew Reale ’17, plus the partnership of Ian Brostowski ’18 and Aidan Byrne ’17 – qualified for states through a written marketing plan section of the competition. The top four teams from each category and section qualify for states, typically out of 10-20 teams, making this initial showing for the Rivers DECA club an extremely successful one.
Beyond the presentation or written submission – which accounts for 2/3 of each group’s score from the judges – there is a written exam that tests students on topics covered in DECA’s curriculum materials, which are available to individuals or schools through their website.
“We were nervous and thought we might be at a disadvantage as a first-year club at a school where DECA isn’t an elective like it is at most of the schools in our district,” Shahen said. “But we are both very interested in marketing and benefitted from taking Economics at Rivers, which definitely helped prepare us for the test portion. It was a really cool experience, and we’re excited for the next stage of this.”
The DECA Massachusetts State Career Development Conference will be held at the Marriott Copley Hotel in Boston from March 9-11. In addition to the competitive side of the conference, there are workshops, information sessions, and a networking “dance” where students can meet fellow DECA members from throughout Massachusetts.
DECA is a national organization that sponsors competition and curriculum around the fields of business, entrepreneurship, finance, hospitality, marketing, and management, and boasts chapters at more than 3,500 high schools around the country.
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