Denver University Race and Case

Some of you may know that I just got back from the University of Denver Daniels College of Business Race and Case competition. BYU took 1st place in the competition overall and we were super excited to be there.
Check out this video clip one of my team mates put together from our pictures.


After three weeks of intense preparation (well, really about one week of intense preparation, including staying at the Tanner Building well after midnight several days in a row) we left for Denver on Thursday morning last week. We drove in a BYU van and there were seven people on the team, including our "coach", Russ Tanner, who mostly went along for the skiing at Vail, CO. We drove all day and when we got to Vail in the early afternoon, it was snowing so hard we were afraid I-70 would be closed and we would not be allowed over the passes and Eisenhower Tunnel to get down to Denver. We pulled out the snow chains (brand new) and were able to safely navigate the descent to Denver. I didn't realize it, but I-70 climbs to an elevation of over 11,000', so we were way up there in a real winter blizzard.
We finally made it to the Marriott Courtyard hotel about 6:30 pm after nearly 11 hours on the road. We checked in, changed, and ran to our cocktail party/mixer that evening. It was not all that fun or exciting since mostly everyone else was drinking, but they had some good appetizers. Following our return to the hotel, we started hitting the case preparation again. We had an emergency change in the presentation and one of our team members had to change his part completely to fit the presentation within the alloted 20 minute time slot. We wrapped that all up about 2:30 am and got as much sleep as possible before our 6:30 wake-up call.
After showering, I went down to enjoy the complimentary breakfast. After filling my plate and ordering an omelet, the waiter came up to me and informed me that the meal was not included in the price of the room and it was going to cost me $12. That was not very cool, but the food was good. I enjoyed every bite of it!
We were the first team to compete, so we got pumped up, ran through the presentation, and then went before the judges. The initial judging was done by a small panel with three teams presenting to different judges in different rooms at once. Luckily, the presentation we gave the judges was the best we'd done yet, so we were very excited after. We returned to the hotel and slept for an hour while the other teams were giving their presentations. When we went back for lunch, they announced that we had been selected as one of the top four finalists and would be presenting again before all of the judges combined. We were ranked in first place at that time.
We had two hours after lunch to prepare, and I swear we practiced the presentation 10 times over and over and over. By the time we were to present, we were past ready and we went in and did a really good job on the presentation. After each presentation there was a 10 minute Q&A period and we felt like we answered their questions well and were able to lighten the mood sufficiently to make the presentation enjoyable. The real key to our success was Juan, our Mexican International Hero who did a great job and was able to bring the presentation down to a personal level. He used a carrot to illustrate how sometimes companies need a carrot dangled in front of them to give them an incentive to do the right thing. The judges loved it and it really eased the tension and boredom in the room.
Following our presentation, we were supposed to head directly up to Vail, but I-70 was closed. We were forced to go to the Brown Palace, the only 5-star hotel in Denver. On the way there, I asked Cale, our Denver expert, "Isn't there a famous building here that is built on a 45 degree angle?" He didn't know what I was talking about, but as we pulled up to the hotel, I realized the Brown Palace is that building - the only building in Denver I could recognize from our trip there when I was way younger. The hotel was cool, though we weren't sure where the 5-star rating came from. It's around 100 years old and very classy. The bathroom tiles are hexagonal and we got our own bathrobes, as you may have seen in the video. It was fun.
That night we played in Denver and were able to go to a Nuggets NBA game. We were pretty tired and the Nuggets were smoking the Wizards, so we stayed for less than half of the game. We didn't leave in time for me to get confused as to who was whom, however, and make a fool of myself. I don't feel too bad though, because why in the heck would the Wizards be the ones wearing the gold colored uniforms in the Nuggets stadium?!! Beats me.
We awoke at 4:30 am and headed for Vail. Things were going smoothly despite the awful snow packed freeway conditions until we got within about 10 miles of Vail. Then Russ, our coach/chauffeur down shifted the van and the rear tires started sliding faster than the rest of the vehicle. We began to slide sideways, hit the cement barrier in the median with the front bumper, and slide to a halt perpendicular to the traffic and off to the right side of the road. The van wasn't damaged too badly, but the front fender was bent such that it was touching the tire and we were leaking blue fluid. We got the snow chains back out and were able to pull the van out enough to get out of traffic, but not before a snowplow came along and called the police and a tow truck. Luckily, three people involved in the competition stopped and everyone who was ski racing took off and left the van with the two guys who weren't going to race.
We headed on down to the hotel, got checked in, and then waited around a long time until everyone got back together and we could hit the slopes and get up to our race.
For any of you that haven't been to Vail (Since only Ben and Jenn read my blog regularly, that is probably all of you), Vail is the largest ski resort in the US, and has the most groomed terrain in the world. It's massive and even makes The Canyons look small. It had been snowing for nearly a week and they had about two feet of new snow. However, it was a sunny and warm day, so the "swank pow-pow" was gone by noon and had been tracked out by the massive crowds before then.
Despite the heavy snow, the race course was a new experience and quite cool. The race course was a NASTAR official race course with electronic timers, gates, and flags to ski around. I skied fine, but all three of my times were 30.5, 30.4, and 30.6 seconds. The fastest on my team got 29.5 or so, so I was a bit slower than him. However, the really fast guys were getting 25.9, so there are definitely some tricks to getting fast times. Only the top two times of girls and top two guy times were scored for the competition, so we were glad when our girls were bringing in times of 33 and 34. The fastest girls were getting 29.5 or so. University of Denver, Colorado Boulder, and George Washington all beat BYU in the race, but we were 4th of 12, so we felt okay. Also, they all had some fast racers who had grown up in Vail, SLC, etc. and had raced a LOT.
We finished the race, taught Juan how to ski (he'd never been in Mexico - go figure), and then skied the rest of the afternoon until they kicked us off the mountain at closing. I liked Vail, but I don't think they have anything we don't here, except maybe massively long lines. :-) The snow was good, but heavy even though it was fresh. Because there were so many people, the moguls were about the size of my car. The skiing was fun though and it was definitely something to remember. I'd like to go back and have a full day to just ski the place and see what they really had to offer. They did have a ton of small cliffs and rocks to jump off, which we tried our best to take advantage of.
That evening, we rode back up the gondola to the top of the mountain to a convention/dinner room for dinner and the awards ceremony. Dinner was good, but we were all anxious for the results of the case competition. We we very pleased when they announced that we had won first place in the case part of the competition and then had placed 4th in the skiing. We were then really excited when we got 1st place overall in the case! They gave us a huge traveling trophy cup, but first we all had to drink some juice out of it in front of everyone. Usually they fill it with beer, but when we saw a pitcher full of juice on the table, we were pretty sure we'd won the case.
Yesterday morning we drove home from Vail without incident and got home in about six hours.
The trip was a great experience and we had a lot of fun. It was a great learning experience to boot and was not all fun and games as you might have thought. I learned a lot about presenting your arguments and the value of preparation before making a case, regardless of the case to be made. It will definitely be one of the highlights of my MBA experience and something I'll remember forever.