Over Spring Break, Drake University’s DECA team competed in Chicago and took home two first place awards out of the four competitions.

First-year business student Austin Cooke started the collegiate DECA team at Drake this year.

While looking at colleges, Cooke decided that he wanted to start his own collegiate DECA team after he saw a former teammate start up his own DECA team at the University of Illinois.

“I talked to Dean Blum about it when I was looking at Drake, and he helped out from the beginning,” Cooke said. “He is now the adviser for the team.”

The university recognized the DECA team about halfway through the fall semester of 2010. The team has about 18 members active members.

The two wins came from the effort of Greg Stoker and Nick Dodd who competed in sports entertainment marketing and an individual win by Eric Baker in the travel tourism industry.

According to its website, DECA is an organization that “prepares emerging leaders and entrepreneurs for careers in marketing, finance, hospitality and management and colleges around the globe.”

Students competing in an event for DECA are given different scenarios for certain aspects of the business world and then are given time to work through the scenarios and figure out what they would do. Then they present to the judges.

DECA first originated in high schools and then moved into the community college level to give business students at that level an edge in business.