By David Fleet
Editor
Detroit — From March 9-11, Goodrich High School students competed in various aspects of marketing at the District 1 DECA, State Career Development Conference at the Huntington Place, Detroit.
DECA or the Distributive Education Club of America, energize students for college and career readiness with a focus on business growth and development skills. Goodrich High School has had students qualify to compete at the DECA State Development Conference each year since its charter. DECA students include 225,000 members in all 50 states and nine foreign countries.
In December, 14 Goodrich students qualified for the state competition District 1 DECA Conference at Saginaw Valley State University.
The DECA State Level competition includes a 100 question comprehensive test
.DECA is more than a competition series, added Katie Benard, Goodrich High School teacher GHS DECA coordinator.
“It is a leadership development program for our future business leaders,” said Benard. “It is a really fun competition, and a cool experience to see my students grow so much from their experiences in such a short period of time. As a former State level competitor, I was personally lucky enough to earn a small scholarship from my participation and efforts. I still am in contact with my former adviser from high school. We have judged the state conference together for years.”
This year two graduates, Justin Bescoe (MSU) and Ashley Brown (CMU) came back to judge the competition.  Both are active in Collegiate DECA, and Ashley is President of the CMU chapter and recently was elected as a VP for the Michigan Collegiate Council.