On April 22 through April 27, DECA students got to go to Orlando to compete in an international competition. Two DECA students, Connor O’Daniel and Simar Gill, excelled in the competition. O’Daniel was a Top 10 finalist in Professional selling and Gill was a top 25 finalist in Financial Consulting. The community was a big part of supporting the students. 

“ I had some help from Mr. John Oxford over at Renaissance Mortgage, he helped guide my project, it was on financial consulting and a virtual bank transition,” Gill said. 

The students put a lot of time and effort into their projects and have been working hard on them for months before the competition.

“I started working on that project, in late 2022, in probably November of 2022. And I started working on my presentation and researching what I should put in my presentation, what the prompt was about, and what the project was about,” O’Daniel said. 

In addition to the presentations, the students had to take a test relating to their cluster. O’Daniel took the marketing test while Gill took the finance exam. 

“Well, actually, when I started my sophomore year, me and Mrs. Prince both decided it would be best for me to do this project just because of how difficult the finance test is, but I consider myself a decent tester. So I’m glad to see that I was able to receive some recognition for it,” Gill said.

The students were very thankful for the opportunity to show their skills and earn recognition for their hard work.

“I was actually very surprised when I was caught up on stage. I was extremely excited. But I was surprised. I was thankful for the opportunity,” O’Daniel said.