In a sea of student leaders wearing fancy suits and dress shoes, business ideas are pitched, awards are won and memories are made. These students are not only dressing their best, they are performing their best and learning their best all thanks to one of the largest Worldwide Career and Technical Student Organizations: Distributive Education Clubs of America, primarily known as DECA.
On Dec. 4th, thousands of high school students came together for the N.C. DECA Districts competition at the Raleigh Convention Center, which featured large chapters from nearby high schools including Panther Creek, Apex Friendship, Sanderson, and Falcons from Green Hope.
The competitions include business events that are structured as independent or duo roleplays. For these roleplays, students are to assume the role of a business owner, manager or shareholder, and pitch their ideas on how to better the organization based upon the prompt’s question to a judge that assumes the role of a CEO, business partner or investor. For instance, the Entrepreneurship Series Roleplay prompt this year asked students to pitch to their business partner ways to generate more customer reviews and gain attention online.
Independent roleplays allow the competitors 10 minutes with the prompt to come up with a response and an additional 10 minutes to present this idea. Duo roleplays provide 30 minutes for brainstorming and fifteen for presenting. The roleplays are graded by a judge from 0-99 based upon clarity, creativity and the student’s ability to tie in the performance indicators listed on the prompt, that revolve around business topics. This grade, along with the score for a 100-question multiple choice test completed prior to the competition, is combined to determine winners, which are announced at the end of districts at the grand award ceremony.
The award ceremony has three awards for each event. The first group of names, 10 people for independent events and 20 people for duo events, are called up are the top scorers for the event’s multiple choice exam. The second group of names is the 10 highest roleplay scores for the event. Lastly, after combining the scores, the 10 overall finalists are called, with the top three being recognized with the famous DECA glass, essentially a plaque for placing. Every other recognition, whether it’s exam score or roleplay or overall finalist, is awarded a medal.
Green Hope’s chapter, of nearly 200 competitors, racked up a large amount of metals and glass at DECA Districts this year, despite there being more competition than ever. Yash Gupta (‘25), Green Hope’s DECA president was able to place 1st in his Restaurant and Food Service roleplay. Ege Unal (‘25) placed 2nd in Retail Merchandising and Sarah Pazokian (‘24) placed 3rd in Apparel Marketing. Outside of these glass winners, Jacob Cowley (‘24) and Justin Jackson (‘24) both placed 6th in their respective events, Saesha Agarwal (‘24) placed 7th and Aditi Bhadauria (‘25) placed 8th in roleplays as well. Green Hope won a total of 42 medals, stretching across nearly every event in both individual and duo roleplays, for both exam grades and roleplay scores.
While these awards prove individual success, the DECA Districts competition is about more than just winning medals and glass. Students received feedback from industry professionals and got to spend an entire day with thousands of peers that all have similar interests. Whether they spent their free time exploring downtown Raleigh, or meeting new people at the Convention Center, this experience is capable of providing stimulation for passions in marketing, business management and finance, while allowing students to make memories and connections.
The Green Hope DECA chapter plans to carry on this success at their next competition, NC DECA States: an overnight competition featuring hundreds of schools around the state that will take place in late February in Greensboro. While the Districts event does not impact eligibility for competing at States, any top 5 placement at States will automatically yield a ticket to the International DECA competition (ICDC) in Anaheim, Calif., which Green Hope plans to take as many students as possible.
