MBA Students Compete in Sporting Event

Last week, more than 1500 MBA students from top Business Schools participated to the « MBA Tournament » (MBAT),the largest MBA multi-sport event in Europe organized and hosted by HEC Paris.

1700 students from top Business Schools in Europe gathered at the HEC Paris campus in Jouy-en-Josas, France to compete to the MBAT from May 8th to May 10th. Throughout three days, they participated in 23 sports ranging from rugby or cricket to mind sports like chess or poker. Less trained participants competed in ultimate frisbee, karting or baby foot. Even salsa was represented to this competition. Each day ended with a themed party at night.

Created in 1991 by students of HEC Paris, it has grown to become the largest MBA annual sporting event organized in Europe. Last year, Harvard Business School was the first U.S. business school to cross the Atlantic to send a team for football and won a gold medal.

The MBAT is an opportunity to bring people together to develop their network and their skills like leadership and teamwork through a fun and relaxing competition.

The organizers of this event have put into practice their skills that they have learnt during their classes to arrange the planning, develop a marketing plan, manage a budget, organize the logistics, contact sponsors.

Katrina Senn, co-president of the MBAT talks about her experience of organizing the event.

MBA Today (M.T.) How did the participants and the organizers experience the 2014 MBAT ?

Katrina Senn (K.S.) "As a student of a participating school except for HEC, MBAT was a lot of fun. We had 23 different sport competitions. They got to spend the day meeting other students, competing with their school... A lot of participants remarked that they were very close to their classmates like a real team. On the other side, the HEC students and the organizing team experienced MBAT very differently. As organizers, we were running around constantly for three days in managing different problems and expectations that came up from students. It's an entirely student-run event. So, we organized the hotel, the transportation, sport competitions, the parties, the security... We didn't hire bartenders from outside or a huge cleaning crew, we did that by ourlselves. We spent three days not only playing sports but also deeply involved in organizing and doing everything from distributing lunches to bartending in the evening."

M.T. What were the challenges you had to deal with when organizing the event ?

K.S. "MBAT is actually part of the academic curriculum. It was definitively challenging to balance schoolwork, career projects plus organizing the MBAT, preparing for it and then surviving for three days of running around ! It was a big challenge for me to learn to manage my classmates because it wasn't a real business where we had clearly defined roles. We were 24 people from different backgrounds and had different goals. Everybody was commited to making MBAT happen. But, we had different priorities to deal and manage through the rest of the year. I'm really happy that in the end, we manage to organize a great event and have a lot of fun doing it !"

This year, London Business School won the 24th edition of the MBAT and succeeds to the 2013 winner HEC Paris.

2014 participating schools were :