Agnes Boutros, third year marketing student at St. Clair College won a Gold Medal at the Ontario College Marketing Competitions which was held last week in Niagara Falls. Agnes participated in the Quiz Bowl and was proud to bring home a gold for the College. “St. Clair always does well in this competition. It’s a great learning experience and it’s even nicer to bring home a medal.”

The competition brought 15 colleges together to compete in an all Ontario Marketing Competition. This event was an excellent learning experience for students which will benefit them for many years. Students and teachers arrived at Sheridan on the Falls on Wednesday, November 12. Thursday night was the first major event to kick everything off, the Quiz Bowl where St. Clair had 4 students participate, namely Agnes Boutros, Jill Soucie, Jaclynn Mckeown and Scott Despins. The 4 students were split amongst other students from across Canada. After early first round exits from Jaclynn’s team as well as Scott’s team. It was up to Jill and Agnes to carry the weight of St. Clair’s gold medal aspirations. After Jill and Agnes battled between each other, Agnes’ team was the victor and moved to a spot in the championship round. After some minor controversy, and tough competition Agnes showed up in championship form. No definition was too difficult for her to overcome as she helped put St. Clair on the map with a gold medal in Quiz Bowl. Her team couldn’t have been prouder of her, as it showed all of her hard work and dedication paid off.

After the excitement of Thursday, it was on to Friday, which was the main day of competition. Students were required to compete in case studies focusing on different aspects of marketing. Students were paired in groups of 2 and given half an hour to read about a company’s history and current issues. After the preparation time was over, students had another half hour to present their findings and solutions to a panel of judges. Representing St.Clair for Sales Management and the Retail Case were Frank Pirillo and Nick Mastromattei. Rachel Christensen and Rochelle Howard participated in the Direct Marketing and Integrated Marketing Communications events. Jaclynn McKeown and Jillian Soucie demonstrated their Marketing case abilities and Ryan Best and Veronica Bulmer showed their Entrepreneurship and International Marketing skills. Ryan Best also competed with Agnes Boutros in the Marketing Research case. Another event was the sales presentation, where Scott Despins prepared a presentation about advertising Yahoo.ca to a panel of Canadian Tire executives. Another event was a job interview where Jerzy Kubiak simulated an interviewee for the acclaimed Niagara wine company, Peller Estates. It proved to be a long and strenuous day on each of the participants, however, each student came out of their event feeling as if they had given it their all and done everything to the best of their abilities and St.Clair College was proudly represented!

Once the results were tallied St.Clair was awarded a fourth place finish by Veronica Bulmer and Ryan Best in the International Marketing Competition. However, even though St. Clair wasn’t necessarily victorious in any of the events, it proved to be a winning trip in a different way. Each student found new characteristics about themselves they may have not known they possessed, as well as skills their partner had developed over the past few weeks of preparation. Students who weren’t friends before the trip found this to be an excellent bonding experience. The students came back to St. Clair with a new internal pride and a newfound sense of admiration for their classmates, program and teachers alike.