On Tuesday, the DECA members took a field trip down to the University of Texas to learn about sports marketing and all aspects that surround the university and their marketing team. It was a sports career and learning lab day where students met with universities athletic department and executives.

“This helped the DECA students learn about sports and gave good real life examples of the jobs available in sports,” DECA sponsor Lindsey Kalb said. “We saw some examples of good and bad public speakers, and how to apply what they learned to DECA competitions.”

The day was broken up into nine different stations. Students got listen to different speakers from each branch of the UT sports marketing team within these stations.

“We learned about what you don’t see behind the scenes,” Kalb said. “Some of the most interesting things that I feel that the students learned was the risk assissments that is associated with sports marketing and all the NCAA compliances.”

There were 40 DECA members that went on the field trip. They learned about all the fundraising and sales that goes into the University of Texas sports department.

“I enjoyed talking with the head of sales and retention team,” senior DECA president Nick Blauvelt said. “I thought it was interesting to learn about how UT sells its tickets and retains customers.”

Elementary to high school students from all over Austin participated in the sports career day, listening to speakers and participating in stations.

“It was good exposure to life in the business world,” said senior DECA Financial Vice President Rohan Gupta. “I thought it was interesting to see that most of the people that worked for the UT sports marketing team did not major in business or sports. It was a good example of people having jobs outside of their field of study.”

Students got to tour the football stadium the locker and trophy rooms as well as.

“It was interesting going around the football stadium,” junior DECA member Claire Costilow said. “[It was interesting] learning about all the different people that help to make a college gameday possible.”