After advancing from regionals in January, many DECA students will be competing at state in Dallas on Friday.

“There’s a lot of different fields that you can compete in from like sports marketing, to fashion merchandising, to just general business finance, so there’s a lot of different events to compete in,” co-president senior Riya Khosla said.

With this many different fields, students competing are preparing in different ways.

“Individually, a lot of competitors are either revising their written presentations and they’re working on revising their oral presentations for competition,” Khosla said. “If they’re doing an individual Series event they’re practicing roleplays and just learning more about whatever section they’re competing in so that they’ll do better at competition.”

Many members are excited to see their hard work pay off.

“My team and I have been working hard the past couple of weeks for state,” senior Jiya Surywanshi. “I hoping that we can advance to Internationals in April.”

It’s not all about winning awards and advancing. Members also get many chances to learn some real life skills.

“My favorite part about state, besides competing, is getting to work together with my team and the chapter,” Surywanshi said. “Also, I gain a lot from going to these competitions, including learning new business skills and making new connections.”