The Business Golf Club held its Winter Classic tournament on Friday, March 9, as a practice event for members playing in the Spring 2012 Club Championship, taking place later this semester.
BGC, still a new club at this university, was created not so much for competitive golf matches, but to prepare undergraduates, graduates, and Ph.D. students for playing the game in the presence of potential employers.
“Most of us are here for business purposes,” said the club’s co-president Marc Russo, a senior economics and neuroscience double major.
What is sometimes the most important event of the season for members, the Club Championship brings out recruiters from various companies who will talk to the members during a match and possibly create job or internship opportunities for the students, and students have been successful in landing positions this way.
Chris Waddail, a sophomore accounting major, met a recruiter from McGladrey, a major nation-wide accounting firm, at a previous Club Championship and landed an externship out of it.
The Winter Classic is one of the preparatory events held throughout the semester to get the members ready for playing with recruiters without embarrassing themselves.
“I could practice for five days and play magically, and then if I went out with a recruiter, I’d do horribly,” said Tim Robertson, a senior economics major and the club’s treasurer. Practicing, like with the Winter Classic, he said, was the only way a student could prepare for such an intense event. 40 members, out of the 80 that come to meetings biweekly, had signed up for the Classic, but chilly temperatures were keeping some of them away, said Russo.
In the past, the Club Championship has brought recruiters from Northwest Mutual, McGladrey, Reznick Group, KPMG, and other accounting firms. This year, however, the club’s officers are reaching out to Boeing and Lockheed Martin to help connect the club’s engineering majors with the same opportunities as the business students currently have.