March 27, 2015 at 4:22 p.m.
Dollars and Sense: Two RHS teams headed to state Finance and Investment Challenge Bowl
Dollars and Sense: Two RHS teams headed to state Finance and Investment Challenge Bowl
The team of seniors Mike Anderson, Scott Sedlacek and Brendan McGuire won the competition. Seniors Morgan Blaser, Brianna Gilbert, Riley Aschenbrenner and sophomore Max Holperin took second place.
The top two teams from each of the seven regional competitions around the state will compete in the state championship to be held April 29 in Milwaukee.
The two RHS teams defeated squads from Crandon, Northland Pines and Three Lakes.
"It feels great. It was an awesome team effort," Anderson said. "It's the second year in a row that we did this, so it's good to get it back again."
Anderson, along with McGuire, was a part of the team that went to state last year. That team took fourth place at last year's state competition. Anderson said that experience will help the team greatly as it prepares for the championship.
"State was a huge eye-opener last year because it showed us that we weren't the fastest," he said.
"We made some changes this year and we're playing like the state winners did last year, so I think we have a good shot at winning this year, honestly."
The competition is a lot like "Jeopardy!" and a quick trigger finger is a must. The knowledge to answer the questions is just as important, though, which means the team has a lot of studying to do.
"We're going to have study sessions at each other's houses. We're going to review a lot of the vocabulary and practice PowerPoints, as well," Anderson said.
"We're just going to keep working together to get better."
The two teams will also be fighting to combat nerves. Aschenbrenner, who is a multi-sport athlete, said she's never been more nervous than she was before the finance bowl.
"This is probably the most nervous I've ever been," she said. "In this, you don't have time to think about it, you just have to do it. There are no other options other than answering the questions."
Nerves aside, she's excited to be heading to state.
"It feels great," she said. "I'm excited. It's going to be a lot of fun."
While the kids may have been nervous, their teacher, Patrick Kubeny, was calm and collected. He knew the kids were going to succeed.
"Our goal this year was to get two teams to state. We had never done that before and we accomplished that goal," he said.
"It's so much fun - my most fun day as a teacher is today. There are a lot of fun days, but this is my most fun day. I don't have any pressure on me, it's all on them. My work was done prior to today. Today, I got to sit back and enjoy watching them execute on the things they've been working so hard at learning. They did a great job. I'm very proud of them. It was an absolute blast."
Fun is one of the goals of the bowl, but the larger goal is education and increasing the students' financial literacy.
"There's more and more of a focus on increasing financial literacy around the state," said Richard Entenmann, executive director of Asset Builders, the group that sponsors the competition.
"People are starting to realize this knowledge and these skills need to be taught at a younger age, before kids graduate and head out on their own. The lessons aren't really all that hard to learn, but it's very powerful knowledge and it's important to learn early on. It's important in so many ways. The younger you are when you learn the importance of saving and investing, or just making smart choices and being a smart consumer, the better."
Two of the judges, Brandon Karaba of Peoples State Bank and Dave Mannikko of Boyd Financial Services, agreed.
"It's more about the real-life situations that people are going to be getting into, stuff these kids need to know about before heading off to college, such as credit cards and lines of credit and understanding how to balance checking accounts and budgets," Karaba said.
"Sometimes, when you're older you just kind of take that for granted, but it's something we need to make sure to teach these kids about so they don't have to learn it the hard way."
"It gets them a really good education on all that stuff, which is very important to know as a young person heads out on their own," Mannikko added.
"Everybody needs to know that stuff."
Marcus Nesemann may be reached at [email protected].
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