First place for Laurier in annual JDCC

Business students at Wilfrid Laurier University overwhelmed social media on the evening of Jan. 26 in support of the success of the university’s team at the Jeux du Commerce

Central (JDCC) competition. Laurier took home both the School of the Year title and Academic Cup for the fifth year in a row. The competition itself has only been running for five years.

“I think it’s incredible,” said Brandon Van Dam, School of Business and Economics Students’ Society (SBESS) president, who was also part of Laurier’s JDCC team. “It’s hard for me to realize that we can continually win year over year.”

The competition ran from Jan. 24-26 at the University of Guelph. This year, 15 schools competed from Ontario, Québec and the Maritimes.

There are four main sections to the competition: eight academics cases, a parliamentary-style debate, an athletic tournament and social challenges. Schools are awarded points for each of the categories. They also receive points based on their dollars raised prior to the competition in a charity component.

“In terms of process, we tend to start earlier and earlier every year, especially now with more and more titles that we win,” David ludiciani, Laurier’s JDCC team captain, explained in terms of their preparation for the competition.

He and Srin Sridharan, the academic captain, began interviewing people in July for the academic and debate teams. The final team was compiled by mid-September when weekly practices began.

Laurier’s delegation is made up of about 50 students from the School of Business and Economics.

Both ludiciani and Sridharan agreed that the amount of work that Laurier’s JDCC team puts into preparing for the competition is what sets Laurier apart from the other universities they compete against.

“I guess this was the one year where there was more hype about other schools coming for us and there’s more schools in the competition, everyone is going to work that much harder to beat us. But I still think we managed once again to outwork everybody,” said ludiciani.

And while, according to Sridharan, other schools have been able to replicate what Laurier does in some aspects of the competition, they haven’t been able to do this across all categories.

“Laurier’s consistency across the board is what’s made them win five years in a row,” he said.