Oct 30, students from Legacy middle school, Thunder Ridge middle school , Pickens middle school, Horizon middle school, Highlands Ranch high school, Thornton high school, Northglenn high school, Fossil Ridge middle school, Ponderosa middle school, Smoky Hill high school, and Monarch high school attended DECA invitational at CU campus at Wolf Law building. Monarch High school hosted the event. Juniors Ashley Diesburg and Sierra Gray competed as a team at the DECA invitational.

“DECA is a club that gives marketing students opportunities to compete and expand their knowledge of the business world,” Diesburg said. “The invitational was one of those chances to compete. DECA kids from different schools around Colorado competed in a variety of categories for a chance to win and to improve their skills before the next level of competition.”

There are certain requirements required that must be done before competing in any DECA competition. “Before you go to the competition, you take a PK test to see how much you know [about marketing/business]  then you compete in your event, [as a] team or individual and the scores are added together to see where you place,” Diesburg said.

This was Diesburg’s second competition, with her first was mock districts at Smoky Hill, but she competed as an individual. CU was her first team competition.

“I’ve never competed with [a] partner before, so we were a little unsure about how we would work together, we also went into an event we knew little about so we didn’t feel like we would win. But I think we thought that we were going to do better than we did. But we didn’t really have any expectations, it was more for fun and practice than winning,” Diesburg said. “ I don’t feel like the results reflected the effort my partner and I put in but now we know what we have to work on to do better.”

The event they competed in was Principles of Hospitality and Tourism out of estimated 20 events. Diesburg and Gray unfortunately did not place in their event but Diesburg will take steps to help improve her skills in future competitions.

“I definitely need to know more about what i’m actually competing in. We went into it not knowing much about what we were actually doing. i was also told to be more confident and organized so i’ll have to work on those things as well,” Diesburg said.