It’s not just the wrestling team sending students to state these days. 

DECA is about to send three students to the state meet March 12-14 in Kansas City. 

What is DECA? It is a club that mainly focuses on marketing and business. The supervisor of the club is Wayne Montgomery. 

Three girls qualified for state: Alexis Cox, Olivia Plesons, and Jasmine Casey. 

Plesons said, “I kind of went into it blind. I did it because it was something new I’d never tried before. I’m a senior and I did a lot of clubs during my freshman year but my sophomore and junior years were both taken over by COVID.” 

In DECA, students have to compete in marketing competitions. They pick a category, study, take a test over it at school, then go to the competition. Then, they have to role play based on the topic they chose and those scores will get tied together and the top four go to state.

There are a lot of different sections of DECA. Students can be on a team or by themselves. They can do food, tourism, art, fashion, mechanics, etc. 

The last couple of years were hard for DECA because they were not allowed to go on field trips because of COVID and they had their competitions online. Also, some didn’t want to join because they have to be in or have taken a marketing class. 

Plesons said, “Last week, we went to the South County mall early in the morning while everything was closed and empty and all the other groups were in suits and business attire.” 

Cox said she is ready for the state competition. 

Alexis Cox said, “I’ve been studying and writing notes and I’m ready to place higher than in districts.”