By Kennedy Werner

Michigan’s Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA) program, available for aspiring marketing and business students statewide, provides a series of competitions incorporating basic marketing strategies. Marketing teacher Lisa Jastrzab and students from marketing and professional marketing classes faced their first contest Saturday, January 11, at Lakeland High School from 9AM to 1PM. WLC’s team competed against the districts of West Bloomfield, Farmington, South Lyon, Novi, Lakeland, Milford, and Waterford.

“I learned lots, and most importantly, represented our school in the best way possible,” said participating junior Kassandra Aboona.

Aboona competed in the marketing communications category of the competition; yet there are other categories that Central students are apart of. These include business law and ethics, buying and merchandising, financial services, hospitality services, sports and entertainment marketing, and travel and tourism.

“Choosing my category was risky because it is not discussed in our daily marketing class,” said hospitality service participant junior Taif Abduljabar, “I picked hospitality based off my own knowledge.”

When the contests began Saturday, students from each category stood before a judge and were given a scenario. Students had to come up with a solution to the scenario in 30 minutes to present to the judge.

Central’s DECA students worked towards January 11’s competition with the online district exam that took place on Wednesday, December 11 based on the seven categories. The exam incorporated 100 questions that ranked students among their competition affecting their chances of excelling at Lakeland.

“Although I thought the test was weird and has some really random questions, Mrs. J helps us prepare a lot with practice skits that we do in class,” said travel and tourism participant junior Rachel Utterback.

DECA’s goal is to create leaders among societies all over the globe. They specialize in finance, hospitality, management, and marketing. Central students who will partook in January 11 games include Sydney Boucher, Utterback, Kseniia Burdeina, Taylor Scott, Shameel Latif, Colby Sears, Aboona, Jenene Murad, Abduljabar, Yousif Denha, Kevin Hines, Josh Farley, Silas Israel, James Roberts, and Alex Belilovsky. Students that made it to State Competitions include Boucher, Utterback, Latif, Sears, Abduljabar, and Denha. State Competitions will be held at the Renaissance Center in Downtown Detroit on March 14-16.

“My hopes are that the students do well and hopefully make it to the International Competition in Atlanta in May,” said Jastrzab.