January keeps getting better for Goodman School of Business student Zach Ferry.

The fourth-year business student brought home a first-place medal at DECA U Provincials last weekend, just two weeks after earning a second-place trophy for Goodman’s award case at JDC Central.

DECA U Provincials saw 1,200 college and university students from Ontario and Nova Scotia compete in several business categories over three days in Toronto.

The Brock team won a total of 18 medals at the competition, tripling last year’s medal count and surpassing the Goodman record by seven medals.

Made up of 52 students, the Goodman DECA delegation trained for the event for four months under the direction of President Steven Simons, who is still beaming with pride for the full team.

“Medaling to this extent, it means everything,” Simons said.

“We started the year looking at all the different aspects of what’s going to make our chapter and our team succeed,” he said. “To actually see it all come together in one night over the course of an hour or two where you just keep seeing Goodman walk across the stage over and over again — that’s an unbelievable feeling.”

Ferry and his teammates Yvonne Huynh and Arusa Mithani took first place in Case Boss, which followed a slightly different formula than the rest of the categories and was attached to a $1,000 cash prize. The trio received the business case well before the competition and worked leading up to the weekend to analyze the project management issues and develop a solution.

For Ferry, who is also the Executive Vice-President of Goodman DECA, seeing the rest of the team’s successes is just as rewarding as his own win.

“Seeing the Goodman team medal at a record-breaking pace was even better than placing myself,” he said.

“As an executive we were very motivated to help our delegates achieve what they wanted to achieve. We put in all that time to help provide tools they could use to develop themselves. They did that and worked so hard.”

Case competitions offer an experience like no other as they not only tests students’ business knowledge and presentation skills, but also their ability to problem solve quickly.

“You put yourself in an uncomfortable situation at case competitions because a lot of them involve presenting on the spot,” Ferry said.

“We get used to a lot of thinking on our feet, presenting in front of crowds and becoming more confident with presentations.”

Most categories at the DECA U Provincials are individual events, which include a written exam component and a 10-minute presentation based on a 15-minute prep session with a short business case. Medals were given to the top three students for the exam, the presentation and first, second and third place overall for each category.

Several Goodman students placed individually in the top three for presentations and exams in their respective categories. They include first-year accounting student Priyang Acharya for a presentation in Accounting; third-year accounting student Kawshik Basak for both the written exam and presentation for Accounting, in addition to taking third place overall; first-year accounting student Nimrat Brar for a presentation in Travel Management; second-year business student Shehryar Khalid for a presentation in Business Financial Services; second-year business student Chris Fisher for the Retail Management written exam; and second-year accounting student Deborah Ooi for her Business to Business written exam.

Teams of two students competed in the remainder of the category events in which they were given 30 minutes to analyze a case before making a 15-minute presentation to communicate their recommendations.

In International Marketing, second-year business students Avneet Rehal and Jasman Bisram placed in the top three for their presentation and took third place overall while Bisram also placed in the top three for his written exam.

A team of second- and third-year accounting students, Danyal Ahmed and Natalie Tosello, earned a medal for second place overall in the Business to Business category.

“As an executive team, we tried to make it clear to the rest of the team what was expected of them and in true Goodman fashion they executed it and I am incredibly proud of all of them,” Simons said.

He said he is grateful for the support shown by Goodman graduates Justin De Caire, Max Marchuck, Mithulan Perinpanayagam, Simar Sanga, Emily Schoppmann and Jill Windeatt, who helped the team practice at an internal competition held in November.

Making up the full Goodman DECA team are:

Individual Events

•       Accounting: Priyang Acharya, Sven Almeida, Kawshik Basak, Justyn Ho
•       Business Financial Services: Daniel Danaher, Chris Jitla, Shehryar Khalid, Punit Tailor
•       Management Consulting: Alexa Ogilvie-Robinson
•       Fashion Merchandising and Marketing: Lauren Battel, Julia Baird-Oryschak, Smiley Bhayee, Hilary Ingram
•       Human Resource Management: Barbara Alvarez, Charnjot Brar, Tashonta Fairman, Harvinder Trehan
•       Travel Management: Humza Ahmed, Nimrat Brar, Francesca Fernandez, Anirudha Roy
•       Restaurant and Food Service Management: Karina Atha, Andrew Chi, Robert Mandru
•    Retail Management: Justin Enns, Chris Fisher, Bradley Young

Team Events

•    Business to Business Marketing: Danyal Ahmed and Natalie Tosello, Anustha Narang and Rhea Modi, Steven Simons and Deborah Ooi
•       Marketing Management: Simran Arora and Ishan Patel, Andrew Scott and Yash Kapadia, Daniel Garner and Samantha Harvey
•       International Marketing: Jasman Bisram and Avneet Rehal, Ann Hanna and Melinda Mitterhauser, Lauryn Davidson and Shanzeh Syed
•       Sports and Entertainment Marketing: Yash Rana and Sidharth Rajan, Demi Xie and Jayna Sutaria
•    PMI Case Boss: Zach Ferry, Yvonne Huynh and Arusa Mithani