Suffice it to say that if this involved football, basketball or baseball, we wouldn’t be having this little chat.
Instead, it is about nine kids in Fort Lupton, nine really smart kids who want to represent Colorado at the end of next month in Orlando, Fla.
They are members of the DECA — Distributive Education Clubs of America — chapter at Fort Lupton High School, the nine best of the 31 kids who in February won the DECA state championship in Colorado Springs.
I had the very same question: What DECA does is prepare high school kids for careers in marketing, finance, hospitality and management.
To win the state title, two of the nine students wrote a 50-page essay detailing work that the Fort Lupton DECA club had done in the community, such as drafting marketing plans for local businesses.
Days after the state victory, Wade Smith, a marketing and business teacher and DECA faculty sponsor, was working atop a ladder at the school.
For reasons no one really knows, the man fell, striking his head and sustaining four bruises to his brain. He remains at Craig Hospital, alert but unable to help put the trip to Florida together.
Having lost their chief fundraiser, the nine students, led by 18-year-old senior Taylor Schaefer, are attempting to raise the $15,000 themselves.
“It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” she said.
They have fanned out across the area, appealing to local businesses for donations. They have created DECA Dollars.
The bucks work much like those green shamrocks that supermarkets every year push on you: Donate a dollar or more, and your name or company gets imprinted on a large blue-and-white DECA Dollar. The front windows of the school are covered with them.
They also received permission to suspend one portion of the dress code for their Hats on to DECA fundraiser. For $3 for one day or $7 for the week, students can buy the right to wear a hat at school.
“That one hasn’t really done it financially for us,” says Deb ra Oliver, the school’s lead secretary, who is organizing the fundraising.
As of Wednesday, she said, the students had raised approximately $4,100, far short of their goal.
In the past, Oliver said, Wade Smith led the fundraising effort seamlessly. But doctors said any amount of stress would only raise his blood pressure and slow his recovery. So the students decided to step up.
Proceeds from sales at the school store, which is run by DECA and marketing students, once paid for such trips, Oliver said. But slow sales this year wiped out those funds.
The $15,000 would cover the cost of airfare, conference registration, hotel, car rental and food.
The problem, Schaefer said, is that Fort Lupton is such a small town and local businesses have only so much money to donate.
“It has been pretty difficult, so much harder to raise money this year. It could be the economy,” she said.
DECA students, she said, are planning other fundraisers, mostly smaller ones such as carwashes and hot-dog sales.
“We’ll get there,” she said. “It’ll mean long, long hours, scraping up every possible penny we can find.”
It would be her second national finals. And she knows it would be easier if she and the eight others were competing in a glamour sport.
“For us to come from such a small town,” Schaefer said, “to have the opportunity to represent Colorado, and to do it for Mr. Smith, to us that is an honor.
“We think it is a really big thing, and we’re planning to be there.”
Donations can be sent to Fort Lupton High School, Attn: Debra Oliver, 530 Reynolds St., Fort Lupton, CO 80621.
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
