DECA
DECA members competed at districts on Feb. 12 and did extremely well. A total of 27 members placed in the top five in their competitions and will advance to state n late March.
DECA President, Senior Madalyn Sanderson, competed in Project Management: Business Solutions and placed first.
“It’s a big deal to be able to compete at the district level and do well. Our district is the largest in Missouri,” Sanderson said.
The club spent months preparing for their competitions, putting in hours to perfect their presentations and test their abilities.
“We definitely practiced a lot. Spending time memorizing our scripts, as well as making adjustments on our score cards so we could receive more points at state,” Sanderson said.
Their relentless efforts paid off, equipping them to handle the three-day state competition.
“We have the opening ceremony and testing on the first day. The next day is competition for everyone, then the last day is closing ceremonies and awards,” Sanderson said.
The journey is not over yet, and luckily for them, they have a great group of competitors leading the way.
“I think we have a really good group of kids moving up, and I believe there will be a lot [of them] qualifying onto the International Career Development Conference (ICDC),” Sanderson said.
DECA will be competing at state in Kansas City from March 22 to 24. Those who qualify will move on to ICDC competitions held in Atlanta, Georgia, from April 25 to 28. Support our future business leaders as they move forward in their season.
FBLA
On April 12 through April 14,
19 students involved in Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) will attend a state competition at Missouri State University. These students showed their talent and dedication to FBLA in their district competition on Feb. 3, 2026. The process to qualify for state is tedious but has been rewarding.
“First, you have to go through the district competition, where you compete with other schools in Southwest Missouri. For some events, you have to place in the top five or even top two to qualify for state,” FBLA officer and past state champion senior, Tracy Do said.
Some competition categories are “straight to state” events, meaning that students who compete in such competitions automatically go to state. Both straight to and other events take a large amount of preparation and studying. Do will be competing in one these events during state competition.
“Mobile app development is a straight to state event, so I didn’t have to qualify. However, for data analysis and artificial intelligence, it’s basically a test, so for that I studied large language models and then different algorithms,” Do said.
These students work very hard on their events. Whether it is studying, creating slide show presentations, or practicing their role play pieces, they wouldn’t be able to do it without the help of their sponsor, Mason Walters, and student officers.
“We’ve been able to achieve this by a lot of meetings and working with our leadership council to perfect our pieces. We are also getting a lot of help from Mr. Walters,” sophomore FBLA member Layla Marie Morton said.
Weekly meetings aren’t the only preparation the FBLA students have done for state. They also work on their projects during Chief Time in Walter’s room and at home, on top of other schoolwork and other extracurricular activities.
Not only upperclassmen have been successful in qualifying for state. Even first-year FBLA students have qualified to compete with them in April.
“The event I’m competing in is business ethics. It is a straight to event, so I didn’t have to make it to districts first. I just went right to state. I am proud of this accomplishment because I spent a lot of time preparing,” freshman FBLA member Adeleigh Gilbert said.
There is a large variety of students competing at the state competition. This is an accomplishment worth celebrating. They are continuing to work hard in their events in order to do their best at state.
