{"id":1375,"date":"2026-03-20T08:20:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T08:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/2026\/03\/20\/2026-03-20-gcc-team-finalist-in-business-competition\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T23:08:57","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T23:08:57","slug":"2026-03-20-gcc-team-finalist-in-business-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/2026\/03\/20\/2026-03-20-gcc-team-finalist-in-business-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"GCC team finalist in business\u00a0competition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Olivia Massucci<\/a> · Staff Writer<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four Grove City College students from the Winklevoss School of Business will compete as finalists in the DICK\u2019S Sporting Goods & Pitt Business Strategy Case Competition on March 25-26 at the DICK\u2019S Sporting Goods corporate headquarters in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team includes senior Alexander Barbetta and juniors Sophia LoDico, Benjamin Forastiere and Modesta Grossman, who advanced out of the highly competitive preliminary round of 56 teams from 40 universities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The national competition tasks undergraduate students to analyze a real-world retail strategy case and present their recommendations to DICK\u2019S Sporting Goods judges. The top three teams advance to the third and final round, competing for cash prizes of $3,000, $2,000 and $1,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year\u2019s Grove City team finished outside the top three in the main event but won the Wildcard Competition. This year\u2019s team will compete against finalist teams from Boston University, Purdue University, the University of Cincinnati, the University of Houston, the University of Kansas, Texas A&M University and the University of Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Assistant Professor of Business Analytics Ryan Miller requires all students in his Retail Management class to compete in the preliminary round, though only one team from each school can make the final competition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOtherwise, I am confident we would have had more teams in the final round,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Miller, who spent 25 years in the retail industry, said the competition provides valuable real-world exposure for students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRetail is tremendously complicated and simple all at the same time. You\u2019re putting the right product in the right place and offering it at the right price, which sounds pretty simple, except it\u2019s not, especially in a competitive landscape,\u201d Miller said. \u201cCompetitions like this give our students direct exposure to real-world strategic problems and to the recruiters and executives at companies like DICK\u2019S Sporting Goods. It\u2019s a tremendous opportunity for Grove City students to demonstrate that they can compete \u2014 and win \u2014 against much larger universities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drawing from his experience entering the industry, Miller said he enjoys watching students grow their understanding of retail and values the opportunity to guide them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI really didn\u2019t know anything about retail until I started my job,\u201d Miller said. \u201cWatching these guys coming from a very similar situation over the course of the past semester really grow in their knowledge of retail throughout the class and be able to pull that all together in a comprehensive strategy that makes a lot of sense and that is offering DICK\u2019S and Foot Locker some strategic advantages is really exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Team strategy lead Barbetta described the team\u2019s initial challenge of figuring out where to start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you open up a file and see thousands of lines of data, it\u2019s a bit overwhelming, but once we got started, it became a lot easier and a lot more fun,\u201d Barbetta said. \u201cThe most rewarding part was definitely getting the email that we had made it to the final round. Seeing that our team\u2019s hard work and effort paid off was a really good feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barbetta emphasized the importance of the team\u2019s collaborative effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWithout their expertise and guidance, there is no chance that our group would have made the final round,\u201d Barbetta said. \u201cSophia, Molly and Ben all did exceptional with their parts, and it really helped that all of us had strengths in different areas, so we were able to put all those strengths together and reap the rewards.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking ahead to the final rounds, Miller expressed confidence in both the team\u2019s performance and the broader impact of the opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFrankly, I feel good about our chances,\u201d Miller said. \u201cI have three goals here. First, to glorify God in everything that we do. Second, to raise the profile of Grove City College. DICK\u2019S does not directly recruit students here, and we have a tremendous group of highly qualified students right in their own backyard that they\u2019re missing out on. I want us to be impossible to ignore. And third, I just want my students to have an awesome time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Miller hopes the competition will inspire rising juniors and seniors to register for next year\u2019s MNGT 312 Retail Management class and consider careers in retail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI plan to continue making this part of my class each year, build stronger and stronger teams each year and, ideally, open internship and full-time positions at DICK\u2019S Sporting Goods for our students,\u201d Miller said. \u201cI hope to inspire a passion in a few students to pursue a career in retail. I think that they can have a very satisfying, fruitful career, and perhaps in a domain that they had never considered before.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four Grove City College students from the Winklevoss School of Business will compete as finalists in the DICK\u2019S Sporting Goods & Pitt Business Strategy Case Competition on March 25-26 at the DICK\u2019S<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[14,51,79],"class_list":["post-1375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campus","tag-front-page","tag-issue-2026-03-20","tag-olivia-massucci"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Ian Schartner","author_link":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/author\/schartnerij23\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Four Grove City College students from the Winklevoss School of Business will compete as finalists in the DICK\u2019S Sporting Goods & Pitt Business Strategy Case Competition on March 25-26 at the DICK\u2019S","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1375"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1703,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375\/revisions\/1703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}