Libby High School students earn top honors

Libby High School sophomore Justin Brewer and junior Sabra Hancock are taking care of business.

The Libby team made the right moves during a business simulation to earn them top honors at the Montana Chamber Foundation’s Montana High School Business Challenge. The challenge is held twice a year over eight weeks in the fall and spring semesters.

Participants were tasked with managing a plant that produced a digital product in a competitive marketplace against more than 230 high school teams from around Montana.

Each week represented a business quarter, in which Brewer and Hancock made decisions in research and development, marketing and advertising, production and inventory, pricing, ethics, hiring and firing, financing and debt management, and analyzing cash flow, according to Libby High School business teacher Michelle Foss.

All these decisions were made while teams dealt with a volatile stock market with human resource and environmental issues tossed in.

All the decisions culminated in a bottom line in rising to the top — stock price.

“The stock price is based on how well they did. It was quite a jump in the last week,” Foss said, referring to Brewer’s and Hancock’s stock price.

Going into the challenge, the team started out with $25 per share. In the final week of the simulation that rose to $130.15 per share, edging out the second-place team that finished with $124.40 per share. Factoring into stock price was total profits, profit trends, dividends and good corporate citizenship.

In addition to the top-scoring teams, a Whitefish High School team earned scholarships for having the highest increase in their stock price between the fourth and eighth quarters. In those final four quarters, the Whitefish team increased their stock price by $68.22 per share.

This was the second time the pair of Libby students have competed in the business challenge. Brewer and Hancock had previously participated in one of Foss’s classes, but this semester took the initiative to compete on their own.

“We usually have several teams compete every year, but by far they have done the best,” Foss said.

Both students will go on to compete for scholarships in the first Montana High School Business Challenge “Challenge Bowl” on April 29. They will be joined by seven other teams along with the top eight teams from the fall semester challenge, which includes Troy High School.

First-place teammates each receive a $1,000 scholarship, second place, $750 scholarships and third place $500 scholarships. Participants not placing in the top three will each receive a $100 scholarship.

Brewer and Hancock are members of Business Professionals of America, which has its own competition, and this year Brewer has advanced to nationals in a business law and ethics event.

For more information, visit MtHSBC.com or email coordinator Stacye Dorrington at Stacye@MontanaChamber.com.

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.