Like many other clubs and extracurriculars, Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA) goes on a multitude of trips throughout the year to compete against surrounding schools in multiple events; such as written submissions, Quiz bowl and even fashion shows. On Dec. 6, the DECA team went on their first trip of the year to North Allegheny Barrel Center. In DECA, students compete against one another in entrepreneurship-related preparation for highschool students. Nine students attended the first DECA Competition. This included returning members, like senior Skylar Scobbo, junior Christopher Denkovich, senior Athoney Battaglia and many more.

DECA is run by Ms. Miranda Santa and Mr. Cole Eged. These two teachers have been coaching the DECA team for the past few years they have been at Freedom. As DECA’s coaches, they have a dress code for competitions, where both men and women wear formal attire. The two, along with their president, Scobbo, and vice president, Battaglia, prepared the members for this competition through practices during personal learning time. Once the team was prepared, they attended their competition against surrounding schools from the North Allegheny district. During their time there the DECA team got to participate in multiple events. After the scores were counted, results revealed that Denkovich placed second in his category, Restaurants and Food Service Management, pushing him on to states, held at Hershey from Feb. 22-24

“It was kinda surreal placing second. Everyone knew that North Allegheny had a large amount of the kids who were in the category. I was just hoping that I could place fourth so I could go to states, but when I didn’t hear my name in fourth, I didn’t have very much hope for going to states. When they called second and it was me, I was so happy, and just ran to get my medal. It was such an unreal feeling,” Denkovich said. 

DECA continues to show amazing prospects for future entrepreneurs and hopes to continue their club to help further people’s understanding of what they do. 

“We are a small program in the district, so what I want to accomplish is for the kids to get comfortable with public speaking and critical thinking on the fly. We also apply these traits to the real world functionality,” Eged said.