By Robert Whitmire

Students in business and marketing classes at SPASH competed in the annual Business Challenge this week, presented by Portage and Wood Counties Junior Achievement.

Three teams of students from Trevor Knight’s classes traveled to Renaissance Learning Center in Wisconsin Rapids to show off their business and marketing skills, and compete with several other local schools for $6000 in scholarships and hundreds of dollars in other prizes.

Teams started the day accepting the challenge to develop and implement innovative solutions to be used to run their respective companies in an efficient, effective and productive manner.

“It was a real life business simulation, very fun, and we’d definitely do it again,” said student Toby Wallner.

Local students who came away with scholarships included the team of SPGolf–Max Bancker, Greg Hintz and Chase Miller– won $500 Mid-State scholarships. That group’s business mentor was Sandy Retzki of Investors Community Bank.

Team GraphX–Matthew Pezewski, Eli Haas and Mateo Soik–was mentored by Max Trzebiatowsk from UW-Stevens Point. That team was awarded a prize basket from local sponsors.

Team NAT T1 Generators–Toby Wallner, Eli Haas and Mateo Soik–brought home a prize basket and were also awarded the opportunity to spend a day on a job shadow at Midwest Communications. Their business mentor was Dan Kinsella of Pointe Precision.

Business mentors sat in with each team to observe and generally guide them through their process and decision making toward the end goal of developing a successful business plan.

“Junior Achievement is a great organization,” said student Matthew Pezewski. “This was unlike any other field trip we’ve been on. We learned how to effectively communicate and run a business with the help of some very smart mentors.”

Bancker, Hintz and Miller will move on to represent SPASH at the Junior Achievement State Business Challenge May 9 at the Acuity Building in Sheboygan.