HILLSBOROUGH —New Hampshire teams from three high schools took on their peers from around the world at the 66th International Career Development Conference.

From April 27 to May 2, more than 15,000 high school students from across the globe, including Canada, Korea, China, Germany, and Mexico as well as all 50 United States and Guam and Puerto Rico, vied for the top spots in the DECA International Competition in Salt Lake City, Utah.

DECA is a program that prepares high school students to be leaders and entrepreneurs and gives them training in marketing, finance, hospitality and management. Each year, New Hampshire students attend the DECA Fall Leadership Conference in October and begin their preparations for the state competitions in February.

The students must win the state competition in order to move on to the international competition, and this year was a banner year for Granite State students, said Marc Payeur, a DECA advisor for Hillsboro-Deering High School.

“This was a great year for New Hampshire,” Payeur. “Last year New Hampshire had two first place winners in the state and we thought that was outstanding.”

But this year, five teams of students made it to the international competition and 99 students from the Granite State flew west to test their skills against the masses of other teens. They competed in 41 different categories and the New Hampshire delegation saw five times finish in the top eight in the world.

Robert Armstrong and Austin Conroy from Hillsboro-Deering High School finished in fifth place in the Virtual Business Retailing event.

Liz Bresett, Kelly McIntyre, and San Pham from Nashua High South finished in the top eight in the Creative Marketing Project event.

Sagar Chitalia and Trevor Haney from Nashua High South finished in the top eight in the Financial Literacy Promotion Project event.

James Halloran, Raymond Ramos, and Cameron Wang from Nashua High South finished in the top eight in the Entrepreneurship Written event and Jakeb Plourd, Aaron Wallack, and Ben Raymond from Pinkerton Academy who finished in the top eight in the School Based Enterprise event.