24 students will be competing in the DECA National Competition in  Anaheim, CA  Tuesday, April 23 through Sunday, April 28.

According to sponsor Eric Lueder, students can make it to nationals if they get first, second or third place in their competitive area in the State Competition, which was held in Decatur, IL last weekend, as a group or an individual. Lueder also said this year, DECA members set a new record.

“We had 21 as a high record up until this year,” he said. “Hard work and knowledge is a deadly combination.”

 This year’s DECA members who made it to nationals are:

Seniors Aid Idrizovic, Brandon Moy, Joel Nelson, Vera Ratner, Talha Ahmed, Sneh Sukhadia, Sony Shajan, Tezen Mathew, Spiro Tsirikolias, Dario Jurkovic, Amir Durakovic, Faheem Qadir, Joe Matuschka, Tommy Williams, Aalvia Ahmed, Robert Urosev, Jake Glotzer, Zayna Usman, and Zack Mubark; and juniors Timothy Chan, Smita Jain, Jessie Amgalanjargal, Valerie Fung, Deepa Pardiwala,and Connie Dang.

Williams said he was excited to find out that he made it to nationals.

“Going into awards I had no idea who the top three were, so to find out I had won the event outright was a good feeling,” he said. “I won the category for sports and entertainment promotional plan which I did on the Chicago Sky.”

Urosev said he felt great when he found out that his group won.

“It was a great feeling knowing that all of the hard work [we] put in finally paid off,” he said, “I also placed third out of 40 students in an individual role play focused on marketing management.”