By Natalie De La Garza
Staff Writer
CARIBOU, Maine — Caribou teams made quite a showing at the eighth annual Junior Achievement of Maine’s Titan Challenge last month as they placed both first and third out of 126 teams from 39 high schools across the state.
The Junior Achievement Titan Challenge is a unique online business competition that puts high school students in the leadership seat to run a virtual company, and Caribou students Delaney Williams, Ben Ezzy and Elijah Verhoff excelled at the competition, placing first; Caribou students (and twins) Caleb and David Hunter placed third in the competition.
Marketing educator at the Caribou Regional Technology Center Reed Nonken explained that the competition is based on real world business issues and the computer program puts competitors through different scenarios so they have to make hard decisions, “Like what do we do if there’s a downturn in the economy?” Nonken explained.
The Caribou students competing were a mix of students in the Gifted and Talented (GT) program as well as students from the marketing class at the Caribou Regional Technology Center — a partnership that Nonken and GT program educator Beth Alden agreed worked very well.
“It was a great partnership of these two groups working together,” Alden said. “[The students] made Caribou really proud and just to be represented across the state speaks volumes for Caribou High School.
Emera Maine employees mentored both Caribou teams throughout the competition; Andrew McNeally worked with the first-place trio while Brent Boyles worked with the Hunters — and every single team in the competition had a mentor from the business field assisting them.
“We didn’t expect to have so many business leaders in our community helping us on this,” Caleb Hunter said.
While the advice from seasoned businesspeople was valued, the two Caribou teams both put in countless hours of preparation.
To practice, students utilized a computer program similar to the one used by students during competition. Each account in the game afforded a maximum of five different simulated business experiences.
Verhoff, Ezzy and Williams created seven different accounts to practice with and, over a month, the three students went from acquaintances to friends.
If there’s one thing Ezzy took away from the experience, it was confidence.
“I think over the course of the game, (our confidence) was boosted,” he said. “In the beginning I think we were unsure, and as we progressed we got more confident in our abilities.”
The three were doing so well, business people were coming by their table just to watch their progress.
Aside from winning $1,000 scholarships each for their first-place achievements, the overall learning experiences was a good one for the students.
“Starting from no knowledge of what we were doing at all, and learning everything about the structure of the business — it was a good process,” Verhoff said.
“We just came together and did it,” Williams said.
For their third-place achievement, the Hunters each received a $250 scholarship.
