At the Nebraska State DECA competition March 15 and 16, 49 Westside students placed.  These students now have the opportunity to travel to Atlanta, Georgia to compete nationally. The students leave tomorrow, April 20, and will return Wednesday, April 25. Marketing teacher and DECA leader Sarah Schau said she was proud of how the students performed at the state competition, and is excited to compete nationally.

“I think this is the smallest group of kids we took to state and 60-70% of them placed in the top eight at State, that is so good,” Schau said.

Senior and DECA president Lauren Fehr will be attending the national competition for the second time. 

“[Last year] was a lot of fun, it was one of my best memories from high school,” Fehr said. “I’m most excited for the Andy Grammer concert in Georgia.”

Jordan Bowen, a junior participant in DECA is going to Nationals for the first time. Bowen is excited to be in the environment Nationals will bring.

“I think it’ll be really fun to be at such a huge event,” Bowen said. “State and Metros were pretty big but I feel like Nationals will be huge. It will be cool to see everyone there and compete and have fun.”

At the national competition last year, Westside and Nebraska as a whole didn’t perform very well, with no team or individual making it into finals. Schau said she finds it hard to predict groups representing Westside that will place well this year. 

“Nebraska brings about 315 kids, and as a whole our state didn’t do very well last year,” Schau said. “We didn’t get a single kid into the finals which was really odd. The interesting thing about Nationals is you never really know what’s going to be ‘stand out’ and what’s not. Something could be really stand out in Nebraska and then nationally, not so much. Also, vice versa, something that got third here could go to the finals there.”

Bowen said she is hoping  that Westside will do well and make it to finals.

“I think we’ll do pretty good,” Bowen said. “There’s a lot of kids so it’ll probably be hard to get any hardware but I think if everyone tries their hardest and puts in a lot of effort, like studying for the test, we can definitely come out on top.”

Fehr said that Westside has a lot of room for improvement from last year and believes that if if people work hard they will do well. 

“I hope people try harder, we definitely will have a chance to place,” Fehr said. 

Schau said she is excited for the students to learn more about the business world, but overall looking forward to spending time with her students. 

“I’m most excited just to get to travel with this group of kids,” Schau said. “They’re good kids and they worked hard.”

Fehr had one final message- she hopes students consider participating in DECA because of the great opportunities it offers. Fehr said that DECA is something very important to her and wants future students to consider it.

“For the people who haven’t thought about joining DECA when they can, they definitely should because it’s a great experience,” Fehr said. “For those who are a part of DECA, continue to be as active as possible to get the best benefits.”