By Jacob Bertram, Collegiate DECA Public Relations/VP
SCTCC DECA members participated in the first ever Virtual International Collegiate DECA Conference in April. The students who participated in ICDC include Samantha Macho, Amy Dvorak, Mathew Odette, Colby Peterson and Jacob Bertram.
For the first round of competition, members in the event of Professional Sales were asked to submit a recording of their prepared sales presentation. The results from the first round were not released until a week later. We all were eagerly waiting to see what the results would be. We all joined a zoom call for our opening session of ICDC. During the opening session we were able to hear from the star Marcus Lemonis of the TV show, The Profit. He had a great message to share and it was exciting to hear from him. We also were able to enjoy entertainment from an exciting musician Svet Radoslavof as he played his Electro Violin while swinging upside-down! Svet put on a great show and you need to check him out https://svetmusic.com/!
After the inspiring message and fun entertainment, we then were able to see who made it to the FINAL Competition round. In the Professional Sales event Colby Peterson and Jacob Bertram made into the top 10 for the final round of competition. Interesting enough, Colby and Jacob were the only Technical and Community College that made it into finals from across the nation! Also, for the Sales Challenge event, Mathew Odette made it to finals! We all were very excited about the great accomplishments. For final rounds in both Professional Sale and Sales Challenge events presentations were made via Zoom with roleplaying judges.
And then we waited another 5 days for the Grand Award Ceremony were the FINAL award winners were announced for all the business events. Colby Peterson placed 5th and Jacob Bertram placed 6th in the nation showing their talents and skills in Professional Sales presentations!
We are all very proud to represent SCTCC and Minnesota Collegiate DECA at our International competition! It was a great way to end our semester for the year! Thanks again for everyone who supported us throughout the conference. A special thank you is extended to The Ward Family Foundation for sponsoring all Minnesota DECA students so they could attend 2021 ICDC. Also, thanks to the employers who helped us practice our competition; Adam Rieland, Sleep Number and Will Nytes, Fastenal. We once again would like to thank our beloved DECA coach, Becky Shand for all her support and motivation!