Tomorrow, the world.

The DECA club at Fremont High School is taking its campus--and the state--by storm. After the club's advisor retired a number of years ago, the marketing and business group, whose initials stand for Distributive Education Clubs of America, languished without leadership.

But in its first year back under new advisement, the Fremont DECA club is winning awards that place the club among the best in the state and have qualified its members for international competition.

DECA members are also working their magic on the Fremont campus--after helping out with Fremont's career fair, DECA members are now preparing for Fremont's first spring carnival, which will raise money for extracurricular activities at the school. What will likely help raise money at the carnival is a coincidental appearance by nationally known recording artists All-American Rejects.

"I haven't heard of them, but the kids seem excited," says Daryl Olsen, the chair of the business department at Fremont and the new DECA advisor.

Olsen had been working in various ways to bolster the business program for years, including bringing in to speak to students through the Junior Achievement program.

"This was the first formal year of reinstating DECA. Once things were going with Junior Achievement, we decided to try to revive it," Olsen says. "There was a good, strong core group ready to give it a shot." There are currently seven students in the club.

Sophomore Ray Trevino, 15, says he joined DECA after a good experience in a business class during his freshman year.

"Our company projects were a lot of fun, so I joined," he says. Ray, vice president of communications, is receiving a lot of training in business, which he hopes to use one day after getting a business degree. "It's what I need to know--it's all about customer service and learning to work with others."

The 2004­05 school year was the first for the resurrected club, which teaches students about marketing and entrepreneurship through hands-on activities and conferences. Olsen says that the Fremont club's main project this year was the formation of a company called Chill-Out Enterprises, which sold more than 2,000 Otter Pops for a $500 profit. "One of the things the kids learned is that it takes three to four days for the pops to freeze," Olsen says.

The students then took their company plan and experience and presented it at the Junior Achievement Company Business Plan Competition last fall, where they won second place in Santa Clara County.

That was only the beginning.

At the California Career Development Conference in Costa Mesa in March, the Fremont club won a number of awards.

Ray placed second in a role-playing exercise in the vehicle and petroleum marketing management division, and junior Victoria Cunha placed in the top 10 in another role play in food marketing management. Those two students were nominated to attend the International DECA Conference at Disneyland in late April, and Fremont won the outstanding new DECA chapter award.

Olsen says that for a conference that hosted more than 1,100 students from all over California, these awards speak highly of the club's Fremont students. "Other advisors have their DECA kids take a specific class, but Fremont doesn't have a class for them to be in," Olsen says. "They worked their tails off. The kids really deserve kudos for all the work they did."

He says what impressed him the most was the fact that his students had to wear business attire for their entire time at the conference. "It was nice for them to learn that decorum," Olsen says. "They were acting like ladies and gentlemen."

And he's not the only one who sees the effect of DECA on his students--Karen Davis, economic director for the city of Sunnyvale, has worked with the Fremont students. "I've gone there to help them with their presentation skills, and they're very bright and very creative,' she says.

Davis, one of the guests at Fremont's career fair on March 23, says the event, which students helped organize, went off well. And soon, their work will be on display for all of Sunnyvale to see--students in DECA are planning the FHS Community Spring Carnival, which will run from April 8 to 10.

A carnival midway with rides will take over the student parking lot, booths run by student groups will sell food and trinkets and a concert that wasn't part of the original plans will take place in the amphitheater.

"Tom Fendyan [Fremnont's assistant principal] was scheduling this carnival in the spring, and we knew that Fremont had won this concert, so he proposed the idea that they both happen at the same time," Olsen says. "And they bought it."

The free concert by All-American Rejects came about due to a contest sponsored by Cingular Wireless on teen website Alloy.com. Jodi Smith with Alloy.com says that the contest involved students visiting the website and signing their school up for the free concert. Fremont was a winner and will host the free concert on April 8.

The performance might inadvertently help out school activities as well. The carnival is Fremont's first, and it is intended to raise funds for clubs and other activities that aren't receiving much financial help during the Fremont Union High School District's latest round of budget cuts. "We're all hurting," Olsen says. "But it's really getting my students involved. The PTA is going gung-ho on this thing. It's taken on a life and an energy of its own."

"It's really fun," Ray adds.