The Hornets Nest has qualified for the DECA International Career Development Conference for the seventh year in a row.

Seniors Samantha LePard, Erin Davis, and Emily Taunton are close friends who participate in DECA together. They wrote the paper that qualified the Hornets Nest for the conference.

The conference will be held in Anaheim, Calif., April 26-29 at the Anaheim Convention Center.

LePard is looking forward to travelling to California.

“I’m really excited to go to California,” LePard said. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”

Taunton also expressed her excitement to go to the conference because she will be able to share the experience with her classmates.

“It’ll be fun to spend time with close friends,” Taunton said.

To qualify, the store must first meet three standards. These standards are financial analysis, pricing, and promotion.

Financial analysis depends on how the store uses money. There are many factors that effect this standard, such as using and accepting credit cards, maintaining financial records, and describing income statements. The students must also be able to reflect on what they have done and decide what they can do differently to improve their status.

Pricing is determined by the cost of products, the pricing strategies, and the pricing decisions. Afterward, the students must be able to explain how they have changed and what challenges they have faced.

The third standard, promotion, is met by doing activities such as planning out strategies, measuring success, and using visual merchandising.

Though they will have fun, Davis said the paper was hard work for all three of them.

“It wasn’t extremely difficult, but we put a lot of hard work into our paper,” Davis said. “We had to explain how our SBE meets all of those standards in-depth.”