By Craig Brinkerhoff
Staff Writer
This past weekend, Westford Academy’s DECA program traveled to the Marriot Copley Hotel in Boston for the 54th Mass-DECA Career Development Conference. Serving as a qualifier for the International Career Development Conference in April, 27 WA students successively qualified to make the trip to Anaheim, California.
“[I’m] very proud of the DECA kids. They really worked hard and it showed. We put an emphasis this year on competition training, and the kids who took advantage of the twice-a-week after school sessions and the training resources we provided succeeded,” said DECA advisor John Rogers.
The conference consisted of 65 Massachusetts schools and almost 2,000 students. Spread across three days, students were required to perform in three to four role plays within a single event. The top four finishers would be invited to travel to Anaheim.
One hundred seventeen Westford students qualified from the district competition last January, participating in 27 events. Forty-one one of those students placed in the top ten, which included over a third of the possible first place positions, and therefore received an award. But that is not the entire story.
“The number who made Nationals was slightly higher this year, but that’s not the real story. I crunched some of the numbers and found that we had many more this year who were closer to making it. An additional extra correct answer on an exam or an extra point from a judge here and there and we could’ve maybe doubled our national qualifiers. WA kids were tough competitors,” says Rogers.
Siddhant Navali, a freshman, was able to beat out competition from upperclassmen around the state and secure a spot on the plane to Anaheim.
“We usually have one or two freshmen qualify each year. It is very hard for them to compete against older kids with much more business class experience and years of DECA. It’s a very impressive feat when they do qualify,” said Rogers.
Before competition began, Westford already had some success. Senior Lena Mirisola won the Program Design Award with her artwork spread across the conference programs. Junior Jayne Pilachowski was nominated as the new Massachusetts DECA State Officer over 13 other potential candidates.
Junior Akshay Bhardwaj was particularly pleased with the conference this year.
“DECA States was an amazing time. It was great to spend time with my friends at the hotel, and meet new people from across the state. Also, the competition was fierce this year! So that just added a new level of excitement because we had to work that much harder,” said Bhardwaj.
Securing a first place finish, Bhardwaj and his partner junior Ben Woodward will travel to California next month.
“I was extremely happy with my results. Before States, me and my partner, Ben Woodward, studied as much as we could in order to give us the best chance to win and go to Anaheim. And we did! Our work paid off, and we successfully won first place,” said Bhardwaj.
The list of WA students who will travel to California next month is: Lauren Katz, Brendan Ryan, Dipanshi Shah, Erin Shaughnessey, Ed Wang, Evan Wang, Ali Flagler, Karun Kannan, Leah Giacalone, Allie Hopkins, Matt Desforge, Nick MacMaster, Christina Caviston, Rachel Meyer, Sam Balian, Siddhant Navali, Akhi Samant, Jayne Pilachowski, Eric Sporel, Lena Mirisola, Abby Cianciolo, Akshay Bhardwaj, Ben Woodward, Chris Tierney, Jon Walsh, Lee Spinosa, and Tori Weiss.
