Two Plum City High School juniors are putting their small village on the map by heading to the DECA International Career Development Conference in Orlando April 22-25.

TriChelle Smaller and McKenzie Bauer will represent Plum City after earning fifth place at the state competition in Lake Geneva Feb. 27 through March 1 for their career development project.

What is DECA? It stands for Distributive Education Clubs of American. It’s an association of marketing students that encourages the development of business and leadership skills through academic conferences and competitions.

“We go and compete with other DECA members,” Bauer said. “It’s everything to do with marketing business, accounting. You can do individual or partner events.”

Both Smaller and Bauer have been in DECA Since they were freshman, even though their freshman year was less than stellar due to COVID.

Bauer said the school’s Marketing 2 class is set up around completing a project for DECA. Advisor Melissa Andrle then chooses three projects to go to the state competition. Students also compete at the district level.

Smaller and Bauer planned a career fair for Plum City Middle-High School students. At the beginning of the year, they started recruiting career volunteers, Smaller said. Nine representatives from different careers signed up to participate. Many were locals, family friends or parents. The girls set secured the school gym for the event, sent out reminder emails, and planned the itinerary. On the day of the career fair, Smaller and Bauer facilitated student visits through the booths, with middle schoolers first and high schoolers second.

“Groups of seven to nine kids were placed at each table for about six minutes, then we had them switch,” Smaller said. 

“That way every person had kids at their booth,” Bauer said.

At the state contest, the pair had to go before a judge and explain how they planned the career fair, how it went, who participated and how they marketed it. Their poster had to follow strict guidelines, such as being colorful and interactive. They also had to submit a 20-page report explaining their project in detail.

“The judge is very professional,” Bauer said. “There’s not a lot of side talk. We waited outside the door, walked in, shook hands. They don’t give a lot of feedback right away. Our advisor gets the feedback.”

“She did tell us that she really liked our project at the end,” Smaller chimed in.

They received a score for the written project and the presentation. The girls admitted they were nervous wrecks at first.

Smaller explained that at the award ceremony, the top 10 entries get called up in the project category. The top six advance to internationals.

“We were trying to not be disappointed, we told ourselves, if we don’t get to internationals it’s okay,” Smaller said. “But they called us in fifth place and we were like shocked.”

Andrle said this is the fourth year the Plum City chapter has sent students to state.

“I’m so happy for them,” she said. “We’ve never had anyone advance before. I think it will be cool for them to pave the way and get more students excited about how small-town Plum City can make it to the international level. When they got off the stage a bunch of us ran over and it was like a group hug.”

While in Orlando, the girls will have the opportunity to visit Universal Studios and the Magic Kingdom. They will attend an opening ceremony, a preliminary competition and hopefully make it on to the next round.  

The pair expressed gratitude to everyone who has contributed to their trip expenses, such as the Plum City Support Our Schools (SOS) group, JM Watkins, the Plum City Educational Foundation and the PCHS culinary classes, who have been selling cupcakes at lunch.

“It’s nice to know that everyone is proud of us and happy to help out,” Smaller said.

“We have a really awesome community that really backs DECA,” Bauer added.

DECA has more than 220,000 high school members in the United States, plus members in Germany, Guam, Canada and Puerto Rico. It’s mission is to prepare leaders and entrepreneurs for marketing, finance, management and hospitality, which fits in with the girls’ future plans. Smaller plans to study child psychology, while Bauer wants to own her own daycare business.

Andrle said she participated in DECA in high school and loved it.

“It’s grown because they’ve been able to see the success of our students so far,” she said about Plum City’s chapter. “If you put in the work to practice and do the projects, you’re going to get somewhere. This year we had the most students ever advance to state (15).”

“That might not sound big to other schools, but it is to us,” Bauer smiled.