By Craig Brinkerhoff
Copy Editor 

On Thursday, January 30th, the Westford Academy DECA team competed at the district conference, and was incredibly successful.  Out of 171 total awards, 105 were won by WA students, including 31 of the possible 35 team awards.

There are seven team categories, of which these 35 awards fall into.  WA swept, as in winning first through fifth and taking all state conference qualifying spots, in four of these seven categories.

The conference was hosted at the Radisson Hotel in Chelmsford, and featured competitors from all over District V: Billerica, Chelmsford, Dracut, Greater Lowell, Nashoba Regional, Nashoba Tech., and Tewksbury.

Senior Ryan Casey performed admirably.

“I placed third in my event which was a shock to me,” he said.

DECA is a national organization for students who are part of their school’s marketing program.  It is a competitive organization that allows students to compete in different categories against students throughout Massachusetts and the country.  Categories for competition include advertising, marketing, retail,entrepreneurship, and many more.

WA has a tradition of being extremely successful when competing at DECA conferences.  Last year they sent 27 students to DECA nationals in Anaheim, California, and of those 27, 3 placed in the top five of their category out of a total of 16,000 students.  This district competition is the qualifier for states, which leads to the national conference.

One of last year’s national competitors, Akshay Bhardwaj, qualified for states again this year.

“I was surprised because along with our own, many scores this year were rather low compared to last year.  Nonetheless, WA destroyed the competition,” he said.

Next up is the state conference for those who qualified, which is March 6-8th and at the Mariott Copley Hotel in Boston.