Last week, Carmel DECA members competed at the State Career Development Conference (SCDC), which started on March 4 and ended on March 6. The event, which hosted over 1,800 students from around the state, ranks competitors and qualifies the top 3 or 4 in every event for the International Career Development Conference (ICDC).

This year, Carmel DECA had 125 qualifiers out of the total 300 or more they sent to the competition. From the 125 qualifiers, 88 competed in the written event category and 19 competed in the roleplay category.

Richard Reid, DECA advisor and business teacher, said, “(The amount of people winning) is about what we expected. The last three years, we have been really successful at the state conference. Students believe that they are going to win and it ends up happening. For the written events, we won 37 out of 45 top three finishes, which is about what we expected, but we were really pleasantly surprised with the roleplay students. We had someone place in all of the series events except for three.”

Both Reid and Sarah McDanell, Financial Roleplay Competitive Head and senior, attribute much of the increase in ICDC roleplay qualifiers to SRT time spent practicing.

McDanell said, “(The competitive heads) provide practice roleplay sessions during the year. They really encourage kids to come in and be proactive and practice not just the roleplays, but also to get really high exam scores. The kids that want to win come in the most and they did end up doing really well at state.”

In order to prepare for the upcoming ICDC competition, Carmel DECA will continue to put time into practicing and polishing roleplays and papers. For those competing with papers, DECA advisors will continue to have presentations during class and continue to provide feedback on changes needed to be made. However, the strategy for those competing in roleplays has changed. Advisors have an account on a site called competitionuniversity.com, which offers preparation on specific markers for roleplays and test prep for specific categories.

McDanell said, “Reid is buying accounts on this website that has a lot of roleplay prep, so every roleplay student that qualified for ICDC will have an account on there. (The site) is something new this year and I think that will help a lot because it is another resource that can help people.”

As the date for ICDC comes closer Reid and McDanell both said that they were excited for the event.

Reid said, “I think it is just fun to see students and the confidence that they develop now that they have won state. I, of course, also look forward to winning because I am very competitive, but that is secondary to seeing students working hard and seeing that their hard work pays off. For a lot of kids (seeing their hard work pay off) is a life changing experience, especially when they continue to work hard and they win at ICDC.”