A team from Wilmot High School proved to have the top business acumen at the Junior Achievement Challenge regional round held today at Gateway Technical College in Kenosha.
The Wilmot trio of Alexander Houghton, Keith Kaczor and Kaleb Martino prevailed on a business computer simulation program competing against students from Tremper High School, Bradford High School, Indian Trail Academy, Harborside Academy and other Wilmot students.
The winning Wilmot team and the Harborside team of Joe Kiser, Michael Duratinsky and Kendall Vega, which finished second in the top division, will advance to the state competition in Sheboygan. The first place team also won a $500 scholarship for each member.
Overall, 39 students competed in teams of three or two members. Each student team was consulted by a volunteer from Gateway or local businesses. (Note: I was one of the team consultants — DH)
In the competition, the teams had to make decisions about selling a fictitious product in the year 2030. They had five minutes to make decisions about areas such as price, how much to spend on marketing on how to invest in research and development. The computer would crunch their numbers, take into consideration economic factors and then rank the students’ companies against their peers. The teams could then try another strategy to raise or maintain their position.
The competition was sponsored by Wisconsin Energy Foundation, Optimist International, the Follett bookstore at Gateway, CoryAnn St. Marie-Carls and W. Thomas Carls, Guttormsen Recreation Center, The Milwaukee Admirals and The Milwaukee Bucks.
Finishing third in the top division was the Tremper team of Laura Morgan and Hailey DeLuca.
Finishing first in the second-tier division was the Indian Trail team of Karen Moreno-Maya, Lynell Constantine and Robert Deleanu.
Here’s a list of all of the participants and volunteer consultants.
