Cinnaminson DECA competed in the Southern Region Blue Conference at the Crown Plaza in Cherry Hill on Tuesday, January 6, 2015. This annual competition has DECA students from all over New Jersey tackling hurdles they would face in real-life work place environments.

Students participating in the event began by taking timed online tests in December. Based on their specific answers to the 100 questions, each student was placed into a category. Within each category, there were both team and individual events. Realistic job obstacles are then given to them. Teams had 30 minutes to solve their problems and 15 minutes to present them to the judges while individuals had 10 minutes to solve and 10 minutes to present.

Seniors Jordan Bergman, John Wright, and Cameron Ashmore competed in Sports and Entertainment Marketing, Marketing Communications, and Retail Merchandising respectively. Bergman, DECA Treasurer, described the event as a “role play situation”. Her team was given the job of acting as movie theater managers. Upon being presented with a list of twenty movies, they were instructed to pick ten and arrange them into what they believed to be appropriate time slots based on their rating. This was Bergman’s second year at Regionals and although she found her role play to be difficult, she was happy with her team’s performance and dedication.

Wright is in his third year of DECA and acts as the Southern Region Vice President of New Jersey. While he participated in the competition with fellow student Tom Schlindwein, Wright had the responsibility of keeping the event running and regulating activities. “It was more of a meet and greet kind of thing,” he explains when depicting his job of directing people to their competition locations and answering questions. He also described his job of writing “quarterly papers for NJ DECA to read” which explain what activities Cinnaminson DECA wants to do in the future.

Ashmore took his fellow DECA members by surprise by receiving first place overall and first in his first role play in his first year in DECA. He scored a 95 out of 100 in his first event and an 88 out of 100 in the second. His final score totaled an impressive 252, landing him in first place.

Overall, Cinnaminson’s DECA students are proud of their fellow members. Senior Blake Long credits the success of the club to the temporary DECA supervisor Mrs. Sandy Metzgar, who is standing in for Mrs. Jones while she is on maternity leave.

“It’s really hard to replace Mrs. Jones, but she [Metzgar] (did) a good job,” says Long.

DECA students are still excited over their latest triumph and preparing to compete at the statewide competition later this year.