The Recreation and Sport Business program hosted its first sport management case competition on November 3, 2017 with industry partner PGC Basketball, an elite basketball training program run by Applied Health Sciences alumnus Mano Watsa (BA ’99, Recreation and Leisure Studies).
Teams of undergraduate students from across the province came together to study challenges facing this real-life sport business. They then worked together to brainstorm innovative solutions. The winning team, from the University of Windsor, collected a prize of $1,000 — along with a fair measure of glory.
“We’re thrilled,” says Professor Luke Potwarka, part of the team that organized the event. “Mano is a brilliant business leader, coach and sportsperson, and one of our program’s great success stories.”
Interest in the event was high across the province, and organizers hosted teams from Western, Laurentian and Brock, in addition to the University of Windsor. Issues examined by the students included strategic planning, organizational growth, and sports development.
Luke hopes the competition will become an annual event, allowing the program to build relationships with other sports organizations and universities, and the students to make connections with each other and with industry partners.
Most importantly, the competition gave students an important experiential learning opportunity, says Luke. “They had the chance to apply what they learned in the classroom to improve the performance of a real-life sports organization.”
