When asked about the Beaver Creek Invitational, sophomore Aidan Smith put on a grin. “The event that I’m roleplaying for is acting as a financial advisor for a new business in L.A. Doing the events is fun and going to state is fun, but there’s a lot of work involved,” Smith said. Smith is one of 59 students attending the Beaver Creek invitational this year for Mountain Vista’s DECA team. “I’d say we usually always try to do really well at the competitions,” senior Riley Hobbs said. “We want to get out of the competition with the win. Hopefully we’re able to do that. I think we have a lot of committed members this year, so it’s made the job easier, especially for me and my officer team getting people ready and prepared.”
The Beaver Creek Invitational for DECA is an important event for students to gather the practice and skills required to role play real-life scenarios and to improve on communication skills. “They’re developing communication skills and business skills so that they can use these skills in their role-plays,” Hobbs said. “DECA really transfers into the classroom. Students can learn a lot of great skills, especially when it comes to talking to strangers and learning about presentation skills. Problem solving is also important, since students are under the gun a lot during competitions with limited time to solve the problem that they’re given.”
This year, around 11 schools are participating in the Beaver Creek invitational, with schools such as ThunderRidge High School, Valor HS., and Rock Canyon HS. making an annual appearance. When asked about previous invitationals, Mrs. Dobert, an advisor for the DECA program, commented “We’ve had a few small invitationals we’ve done really well at. One of the things to focus on is to get kids into practice, which requires a different change in mindset. We’re working on how to encourage students to come into practice before they attend a meeting. We won’t really know how this group does until we attend the invitational and get the results.”
The Beaver Creek Invitational begins Saturday, November 4th and lasts until Monday, November 6th. Good luck, Mountain Vista!
