DECA Goes to Florida Tuesday, May 03, 2011 By Senior Alexis Smith The students who will be attending DECA Internationals: (From L to R) Lena Blackburn, Kerry O’Connor, Landon Ocker, Quentin Harrison, Daniel McNary, Kia Wash-Lee, and Zalak Patel. - Photo by Alexis Smith Advertising After a long year of hard work, 7 CHS students get the chance to compete in Florida at DECA Internationals. They worked tirelessly to place in both regional and state competitions in order to have the opportunity to go. They are all very excited to have fun while learning from this experience. Senior Zalak Patel will be competing with partner Kia Wash-Lee in the Finance Operational Research division.  “I’m looking forward to the tough competition and meeting new people. My partner and I researched a business. We chose Farmers State Bank, then we figured out how they could incorporate social media into their promotional mix and wrote a 30 page paper on it.” All in all, Zalak and Kia spent somewhere around two months working on the project, and Zalak is looking forward to finally competing at nationals.  “Whenever we get there we have a judge and we display our presentation and tell them what we did. We then discuss our project and if the judge has any questions, we answer them. I hope to place, but if we don’t then at least I’ll be able to say that I did get to go and take the memories with me.” DECA Sponsor Stephanie Williams thinks that this event is a very beneficial group for students to be a part of. “I think it teaches them a lot about working with other people. It teaches them how to get the job done and know that if your partner doesn’t get it done then you are going to have to do it yourself. It teaches you a lot of the skills that you will need when you go to college, as far as ways to research and working with local businesses. Also, there are many opportunities available [in DECA] for students to learn people skills,” she said. Senior Kerry O’Connor is very excited to be given this once-in-a-lifetime chance. “I’m most excited for the beach, the nice weather, and, of course, competing. I hope that my partner Lena Blackburn and I do well, have a good time, and make new friends. We are the Entrepreneurship Promotion Project and did the Youth Entrepreneurship Summit in Chillicothe, Missouri. We’ve put in a ton of time and a lot of work,” said Kerry. The students who will be going to internationals are: Kerry O’Connor, Lena Blackburn, Landon Ocker, Quentin Harrison, Kia Wash-Lee, Zalak Patel, and Daniel McNary. They should be congratulated on the hard work that they have put in to make it to where they are now. The Tank wishes them all good luck at competition!

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