Madie Blais
Staff Writer

On March 12th DECA, WA’s business club, headed to Boston to compete at states. The three day competition produced the best results Westford Academy has ever seen.

Thursday and Friday over 170 WA DECA students competed in role plays, presentations, and tests against all other Massachusetts DECA students who qualified for states. This year the club has beat every record that it had, winning a record amount of trophies, scholarship money, and places at nationals.

“Last year Mr. Gagne and I talked and we had our best, most successful year ever, and looking at our roster and all the upperclassman from last year that were graduating we figured we’d never be able to duplicate it again. And then we had a lot of underclassman this year, we had no expectations, and the kids ended up beating last years numbers; it was kind of outrageous.” said advisor to the DECA club, John Rogers.

Westford Academy brought 177 students to states to compete, the biggest group that WA has ever brought. Students competed with about 2,500 others for a spot at Nationals in Orlando. 34 students, the most ever, have made it to compete at ICDC, International Career Development Conference, in Orlando, Florida where over 17,000 students from all over the world are expected to attend.

WA DECA students took home 30% of all the awards in events that were competed in. Eight of those students made a combined 5,100$ in scholarship money.

Another big accomplishment was two state officers voted into office this year, junior Kyle Pilachowski, who ran for his second year, and sophomore Ankeeta Patil. Only once before has a school had two students as state officer at once.

Students going to Nationals