Six Battle High School seniors—Lori Arnold, Grant Hughes, Breleigh Moore, Evie Pemberton, Madeline Samb, and Michelle Flores-Martinez—are moving on to the State Career Development Conference. The Missouri State Conference is held at the Crown Center in Kansas City from March 23 to March 25.
All six of Battle’s state qualifiers are District Champions this year. Arnold and Pemberton placed first in the Buying and Merchandising team event. Moore placed first in the Retail Merchandising individual event. Hughes placed first in the Sports and Entertainment individual event. Samb and Flores-Martinez placed first in the Entrepreneurship Team event.
All six of these seniors made it to the state conference the previous year and are looking to finish better than they had the year before. “One of my goals for State is to get first and to move onto internationals and also medal for my testing score,” said Moore. To move onto the international conference a person would need to place in the top six while also obtaining a DECA glass, a DECA term for their trophies.
“DECA has helped me be able to form more professional conversations which helps at school and work,” said senior Lori Arnold. With the typical conference focusing on professionalism, students typically spend a lot of time working on smooth speech and delivery to make sure that they can get their points across. Doing this can help students prepare for future job positions and speeches in general.
DECA (Distributive Education Clubs of America) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1946 that helps students develop leadership and business skills. According to the official DECA Website, DECA prepares emerging leaders and entrepreneurs in marketing, finance, hospitality, and management in high schools and colleges around the globe. The typical DECA conference is held in a competition format, with two different evaluation measures: a multiple-choice test and a case study role-play.
Once a student gets to the roleplay they are paired with a testing proctor who will act as a manager, boss, or agent while asking the students a series of prepped questions testing their problem-solving skills while also judging on professionalism.
