Sporty scholars mean business at the global MBA Tournament

As an MBA student of Cambridge Judge Business School (CJBS), I took part in the 27th MBA Tournament at école des Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Paris (HEC Paris) – a three-day sporting competition from 4 to 7 May.

The competition involved 21 leading business schools (1500+ participants) from around Europe (plus the Stanford Graduate School of Business) in 23 sporting disciplines. A range of sports were played, from the more traditional like football, to the less ‘sporty’ like poker, chess, petanque, and even a ‘battle of the bands’.

The MBAT is a student-organised event, planned and executed by MBA students from HEC Paris. The event has been a yearly highlight for business schools across Europe for over two decades. It creates the chance for MBA students from different schools to network and compete. It is also a great bonding experience for each school, as over a hundred participants would get to exercise their teamwork and cheering skills for a fun and sportsmanlike event.

I represented the school in badminton (as a team one main player), as well as tennis and basketball (both as a sub). Like many of the other schools participating, CJBS entered two teams for badminton. Teams one and two competed against 20 other teams over the course of two days. Team 1 beat Cranfield and HEC two and proceeded to the ‘round-robin’ competition on Friday while team two put up their best fight but were unable to go through.

We were, however, put up against the eventual champions, London Business School in our round-robin pool. The team fought long and hard but lost two out of the three games. We recovered quickly by beating Oxford 5-0 so we ended up fighting for the bronze medal against HEC team one.

I was able to meet up with two other Chevening Scholars from Oxford Said Business School:  Nabilah Soobedah and Cara Skikne and we caught up briefly.