Blacksburg High shines at national DECA conference
BHS senior Selena Bennett (left) was a national Top Ten qualifier for Professional Selling. Junior Uwem Etuk placed in the top twenty nationally for her Public Relations Project. Photo courtesy of Kim Radford.
Ten Blacksburg High School DECA members recently represented the New River Valley in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Their mission: to compete and develop their leadership skills at DECA’s International Career Development Conference. During the school year, around 120,000 DECA members compete locally and statewide in entrepreneurship, marketing management, hospitality and finance to advance to the national competition. This year, DECA’s ICDC was host to more than 14,000 high school students from the United States and Canada.
For the first time in BHS DECA’s chapter history, two students made the stage in Professional Selling and Public Relations Project event areas. Blacksburg High Junior Uwem Etuk placed in the top 20 nationally for her Public Relations Project presentation of the Austin Cloyd Memorial Basketball Tournament. The BHS Advanced Sports Marketing class plans the event each year, and Etuk was a member of the sponsorship team. Senior Selena Bennett was a national Top Ten qualifier for Professional Selling. In this category, Bennett was challenged to develop a software solution for an international company seeking employee training. Both students competed against over 100 other DECA members in their category.
Junior Jacquelyn Morano presented the successes of the school-based enterprise “The Bear Necessities,” received Gold Level Certification from National DECA in February. Sophomores Katy McGuigan and Kejdi Abazi competed in Tourist and Hotel Management while Seniors Destiny Etuk, Sam Jones and Colton Canedy presented in the Buying and Merchandising Operation Research event. Seniors Alayna Radford and Emma Harrell represented BHS at the career-advancing Senior Management Institute.
Students were able to fund the trip through generous donations from community businesses, including Patrick Enterprises Corporation, Tony Asselin, Moog, Brown Insurance, Crockett Home Improvement, Sub Station II, Modea, Ameriprise Financial, Mike Cook and NRV Junction.
–Submitted by Kim Radford, Blacksburg High School
No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
