For five days members in Annandale’s DECA program who placed at the State DECA competition traveled to Louisville, Kentucky in order to participate in DECA Nationals. Members who made it to Nationals were Andrea Vega, Edcel Argueta, Torie Deible, Katie Bui, Julia Moler, Rachel Gallogaly, Bashir Warsame, Brett Wynn, Banna Gebremichael, Eunice T’Chawi and Sahnun Mohamud.

“In order to place you have to compete against everyone from every state and amaze your judge. They announce the top 20 and if you make that you have to present again in front of more judges. Then they announce the top 10 and 1st, 2nd and 3rd medalists in the grand ceremony which was on Tuesday night,” said junior Andrea Vega.

Bashir and Sahnun placed top ten with their presentation “Wake up Somalia” which was a plan in which they could educate an entire generation of Somali children with no more than $15,000.

“In order to place you have to have strong presentation skills and a clever and a well thought out presentation,” said junior Argueta.

DECA competitions works is much like any AHS sports competition. First there is a District level competition in which AHS students compete with other schools in the Patriot District. If you place at a competition or finish top ten then you move on then advance to the State level and lastly Nationals.

At Nationals students are broken down into five flights of which the top two from each move on as overall finalists. The National finalists for 2010 were announced Tuesday morning. Another round of presentations narrowed the results to a first, second and third place winner. A Grand Ceremony is that night and the top three are given trophies and a scholarship.

“Nationals isn’t technically nationals anymore because other countries like Canada are competing with us. It is definitely the best of the best though and winning the national competition helps gain scholarships for those searching for the business future,” said Vega.

While actually competing in Nationals was hard work, DECA members were rewarded with a lot of down time.

“We visited the Somolian mall, saw the Kentucky Derby museum, walked around the city, ate lots of KFC, attended social get togethers and even saw Lady Antebellum in concert,” said Argueta.

Students returned from the competition Wednesday, April 28.