MGCI DECA Goes About Their Business at Provincials
MGCI DECA Goes About Their Business at Provincials
From 8 to 10 February 2018, fifty-eight MGCI students competed at the 39th Annual DECA Ontario Provincial Competition at the Sheraton Centre. Over 6800 students from across Ontario participated in the event for a chance to compete at the International Career Development Conference (ICDC) which will take place from 20 to 26 April 2018 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Students who went to the Provincial Competition either competed in an oral event or a written event. Oral events comprised of two roleplays and an exam for individual participants, and one roleplay and an exam for teams of two. Teams of one to three competed in written events which involved presenting a written business proposal. Students competing in oral events qualified from Regionals in November whereas students competing in written events did not compete at Regionals.
This year, fifty-eight MGCI students competed at Provincials, showing an increase from last year when there were only forty-nine. Additionally seventeen students from MGCI qualified for ICDC, breaking the record of thirteen from last year.
Jonathan Uy, a Grade 9 student who placed in the Top 8 in the Principles of Finance reflected on the his experience this weekend: “Provincials was a very exciting event, there was a lot going on and so many people to meet. Everyone I talked to in the competition sounded really knowledgeable and I could tell they all practiced a lot.”
Unfortunately, not everything ran smoothly at the competition. In previous years, the case for the first roleplay was the same and the case for the second roleplay was the same for competitors in the individual oral events. This year, competitors received different cases for their first roleplay, allowing competitors to easily tell each other the other case. During the awards ceremonies, the screens displaying the event names were not synced to the awards being presented, creating confusion among the competitors. Scores were miscounted for some events as Tom Liu who placed in the Top 8 in his event mentioned: “For my event, they messed up the scores for the Top 12 so my partner and I didn’t even get to go on stage. After, in the hallway, they had to take away medals and plaques from people to redistribute them to the right winners.” Despite all of these issues, MGCI was still extremely successful at Provincials.
When asked about the success of MGCI’s DECA chapter, President Meagan Wan said, “I think we had a really great year. Not only in terms of results and placement but I definitely saw how members improved their skills from September until now and I’m really proud of all that we’ve accomplished.”
Originally, TDSB students were banned from attending ICDC due to a travel restriction to the US. However, as a result of the tremendous number of students who voiced their concerns to trustees, the board has changed the policy to allow students participating in competitions to travel to the US.
Overall, members of Marc Garneau’s DECA chapter were very happy about the amendment of the policy. Meagan commented on the lifting of the ban: “Competing at ICDC is a wonderful experience that I think everyone should get the chance to do and I’m happy that our members will now be able to further continue their DECA experience in Atlanta.”
Jonathan Uy, Alex Yu, Grace Xiong, Justin Ye, Angela Pang, Laura Lu, Amy J. Chen, Jason Cai, Tom Liu, Andrew Li, Emily Shen, Anjing Li, Harrison Chiu and Eric Shang will be representing Marc Garneau’s DECA chapter at ICDC later this year in Atlanta.
