Nervously waiting for the results, Devansh Sharma, freshman, cheered on his friends and remained patient at the Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA) International Career Development Conference (ICDC) award ceremony from April 26-29 in Orlando.
MHS had six national finalists at ICDC, and they all were freshmen.
Sharma competed in the Principles of Hospitality and Tourism event and received the Top 10 award.
“It was surreal,” Sharma said. “On stage, I couldn’t even process what was happening.”
Principles of Hospitality and Tourism was a role-play event, which meant Sharma received a prompt about a situation relating to hospitality and tourism 10 minutes before his round and had to act out the prompt with his judge.
He had to compete and place top three in his event in a district competition at Kirkwood High School in February to qualify to a state competition in Kansas City during March, and then place top six to qualify to ICDC.
The ICDC trip lasted five days, Sharma said. The first day was spent at Disney and Hollywood studios, followed by the first day of competition, and then a day spent at Universal Studios, which DECA had rented out just for the competitors. The trip ended with two more days of competing.
“I learned a lot, especially how to network,” Sharma said. “I met people from a bunch of different countries, like Canada, China, and more, so I learned some different perspectives.”
His results were a result of dedication, Sharma said. Overall, he felt it was a good opportunity and recommended that incoming freshmen join.
“It’s easy to find success, you just have to focus and play into your strengths,” Sharma said.
Sharma is grateful for his friends like Vihaan Sawadekar, freshman, who gave him feedback on tests and helped him study.
Sawadekar received a Top 20 test score in the Professional Selling event, which was an event where he was assigned to convince his judge to sign a fake contract for his business. He chose this event as he wanted to go solo.
“I thought the marketing category was fun and it was one of the only individual ones,” Sawadekar said.
Sawadekar said he learned a lot from the experience, such as marketing terms that he can use in the future.
“It made me more interested in business,” Sawadekar said.
The trip was fun for Sawadekar as he was able to spend time with his friends who qualified. Eric Doerhoefer, DECA sponsor, found the trip fun because he was happy to see his students get rewarded for their effort in the club.
“It’s incredibly rare for a freshman to make it to ICDC, let alone making it to the finals, so I was incredibly proud and excited, and it was just a super cool moment for how impressive it is,” Doerhoefer said.
Doerhoefer provided resources for his students, such as what papers will look like, how to role play, and more. The entire club also spent meetings listening to students with presentation events and giving them feedback.
He is excited for the future of his freshmen and hopes they’ll continue to do well in DECA their upcoming school years.
“They’re all just very natural, organic, hard workers,” Doerhoefer said. “It’s not cutting corners, and it’s not really doing anything that’s special besides hard work.”
