17 students competed at the district competition for DECA on Jan. 19 at the Woodlands High School and 10 qualified to the state competition.

State competition will be held in Dallas from Thursday through Saturday, and competing members will stay in the Dallas Sheraton Hotel. The 10 qualifiers include: Shaylin Ardoin, Karla Chavarria, Nicholas Davis, Jacob Hernandez, Katrina Kelly, Jonathan Leiva, Tori McVey, Jonathan Ponce, Lazaro Villalobos and Lazaro Yanez.

DECA adviser Bethany Meine said this year has been a little different as they had a lot of new members who competed for the first time.

“For the first time, we had some members choose to compete in purely online events (virtual business simulations) instead of the traditional role play with a judge,” Meine said.

Qualifying members stay after school to practice their role play. Just recently, a few faculty members volunteered to help judge members’ role plays.

“She (Meine) offers little study sessions,” senior Lazaro Villalobos said. “She likes to say, ‘give a firm handshake, eye contact and enunciate your words.’”

Senior Nicholas Davis said role playing in front of a judge is the most difficult part of competing.

“Whenever I was role playing with the judge, you have to think on your feet and makeup solutions really fast in your head and maybe sometimes you would stutter,” he said.

A few Whataburger employees, from where Yanez works, congratulated qualifying members during an after school meeting.

“We enjoyed some cake, were gifted some Whataburger swag and got the opportunity to hear about careers at Whataburger from employees in the human resources and management departments,” Meine said.

If students make it past the state competition, they will compete in the International Career Development Conference, which is held in Florida this year.