DECA Club Sends Pair to International Competition
In its inaugural season, club founders Rider Tuff ’17 and Andrew Reale ’17 finished fourth in their category in the state DECA competition last week and will advance to the international competition in Anaheim, CA in April. Co-founders Blake Griffith ’17 and Shahen Hagen ’17 also finished in the top ten in their category at the 3-day event in Boston which featured 2700 students from 86 schools and conferences.
Blake and Shahen will be joining Rider and Andrew in Anaheim to participate in a leadership conference hosted by DECA. Being a new chapter, Rivers was allocated two extra invitaions for club members wanting to attend that portion of the conference. 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.
“This is quite an accomplishment for these two students to advance to the next level,” said advisor and Math Department Chair Dan McCartney. “These guys started the club from nothing this year, and they competed against schools with over a hundred members. Some of the schools have DECA classes with dedicated teachers/advisors to guide them.”
“This is quite an accomplishment for these two students to advance to the next level,” said advisor and Math Department Chair Dan McCartney. “These guys started the club from nothing this year, and they competed against schools with over a hundred members. Some of the schools have DECA classes with dedicated teachers/advisors to guide them.”
Earlier this year, the Rivers seniors founded the club which competes against chapters throughout the region at simulation and writing-based competitions, similar to Model United Nations and Debate. They hope their success will boost enrollment in the club next year.
At the district competition in December, Blake and Shahen qualified for the state tournament in the 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.
Two other groups –Rider and Andrew, plus Ian Brostowski ’18 and Aidan Byrne ’17 – qualified at districts for states through the written marketing plan section of the competition. Only the top four teams from each category and section qualify for states, typically out of 10-20 teams, making the initial showing for the Rivers DECA club an extremely successful one.
“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,” said Blake of their district assignment. “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 was exciting.”
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