36 qualifying Skyline students flew out to the DECA International Career Development Conference (ICDC) in Orlando, Florida. To qualify, students had to place in the top three at the State DECA competition last February. Then, from April 25 through 30, those students joined 25,000 others from all over the world (including very competitive regions like Ontario, Canada) in competition.
After scoring in the top 25 in their category, three Skyline teams went on to the finals round. These were Anhkhoa Le and Jefferey Zou in the Sports and Entertainment Marketing category, Lydia Bartholomew and Andrew Jiao in the International Business Plan category, and Chloe Zou in the Food Marketing category. With nearly 200 teams in each category, finalizing alone was a feat. However, these students also went on to score in second, seventh, and sixteenth place, respectively.
Placing second, Le and Zou earned DECA glass—named after the big glass trophies received for placing at ICDC—for Skyline, marking the second time this has happened since the turn of the century. For Utah as a whole, this accomplishment makes Skyline stand out. DECA advisor and trip chaperone Syd Lott explained, “Only two teams in Utah won DECA glass out of all the 800 kids Utah sent. Only two placed, and we were one of them.”
For Le, doing so well felt “surreal” yet “bittersweet.” In his Freshman year, Le and Zou had also competed together and did well. So, he explained, “It was fulfilling that it came back full circle, but it was definitely very emotional. I was sad that it was all coming to an end, but it felt good knowing I gave it my all.”
Bartholomew and Jiao also surpassed expectations by placing seventh in their event as Freshmen. “That was really, really cool, because Freshmen don’t finalize,” Lott said. “Usually it takes years and years and years to be able to get there.”
Bartholomew explained that they put in a lot of hard work to do so well. Bartholomew said herself that she was shocked they finalized, as she had felt nervous while they were competing, but she ended up really happy with the result.
Doing a written event, she and Jiao reworked their 20 page paper several times to try and get the best score. “I was just going through each section of the rubric, and I was thinking, ‘What would really impress the judges for each part of the rubric?’” she said. Bartholomew also explained that they had to put their presentation portion together at the last minute, as they couldn’t bring their trifold from State on the plane. “We had to print and cut everything ahead of time,” she said. “Then we went to Walmart and bought a trifold in Orlando and then put it all together like a few hours before our competition time.”
Getting sixteenth, Chloe Zou rounded off the finalists with a solid individual performance in a roleplay event. With roleplaying, which Le and Jeffery Zou also competed in, she had about 10 minutes to prepare a presentation based on a relevant case study. Lott explained, “They present to the judge as if they’re each playing a role, like the judge is the owner of a business and […] you pitch them on an idea.”
In addition to high placings, Skyline also had two students, Kyle Lin Nhan and Kaitlyn Cao, earn a testing medal. These medals are given to students who score in the top 1% for any given test administered as part of the competition. Presenting in the Integrated Marketing Campaign Event, Lin Nhan got his medal for a marketing test. He cited that he had prepared with “practice tests,” though his hands-on marketing experience with last year’s Skyline Super Reunion, which he and partners Alexander Pham and Jonathon Chen based their written event around, likely helped. While they didn’t finalize, Lin Nhan said, “It’s one of the better pre-prepared events I’ve done in high school.”
Apart from the competition itself, students were able to spend their free time at Universal Studios Florida, thanks to bookings of tickets and onsite hotels by the Skyline DECA advisors. Lott said, “They had a grand time. […] You get in early ‘cause you’re staying in the hotel, and they would run to the best rides that normally have two hour waits, and they just ride and ride and ride and ride.”
In addition to Universal, students enjoyed trading Utah pins and swag at the convention center. With dinosaur pins designed by Skyline’s own Jenna Tran and Monika Cinibis and ski goggle swag, students put their marketing skills to practice as they negotiated for accessories from various different states and countries. Some negotiations extended past region-oriented swag, however. Lott recalled how Jiao struck up a deal that meant the difference between the team’s final top ten placing and disqualification. “He was wearing the wrong socks,” Lott said. “You can’t even go see the judge if you’re not in dress code. […] So he ran over to a kid, and he bargained with the kid to buy his socks from him, put on the kid’s socks, and then went in competed and made the finals and placed in top ten.”
This experience was one way in which ICDC allowed the students to put their knowledge into practice. Lott stated, “Most people in the world go into business, and this is what they will do. So, it’s some of the most realistic real world based experience you can get.”
