A team of 18 BYU-Idaho students earned regional champion at a SIFE competition in St. Louis, Mo., Wednesday, April 5.

SIFE, Students in Free Enterprise, is a worldwide organization that “helps others understand and just be more independent when it comes to business matters,” said Katie MacCabe, BYU-I SIFE media vice president and junior from Richmond, Va.

SIFE has been part of BYU-I for the past six years. The BYU-I team has gone to nationals each year. Last year, they were in the top 20 of the nation out of 950 teams, said Marcus Meteer, BYU-I SIFE president and junior from Dublin, Ohio.

The competition is based on projects the SIFE teams arranged throughout the year. There are five different categories for the projects: ethics, personal finance, success skills, market economics and entrepreneurship, Meteer said. There is also an overall category of team sustainability.

The BYU-I SIFE team’s projects helped many people on campus and around the community learn the basics of business. The team put together a total of 21 projects throughout the school year.

Some of the projects included personal finance workshops held on campus that taught students the basics of finance like taxes, building credit and buying their first homes; organizing a woman entrepreneurship forum attended by over 200 students; and hosting junior business clubs that taught Madison County middle schools the basics of business by helping them create their own mini businesses, Meteer explained.

“Another one of our favorite projects is going to the Shoshone Bannock Indian Reservation,” Meteer said. “We help teach small business owners about finance and about the ins and outs of running a business and how we can help them out.”

The experiences and lessons the group learned from these different projects were then condensed into a 24-minute presentation. The presentation was shown to a panel of judges, which consisted of CEOs and top management from different companies throughout the nation.

Preparing for this presentation was no small task. Because it was 50 percent of the team’s score, the assigned presenters put in some extra hours and practice.

Two months before the competition, the presenters put together an eight-page script. They practiced once or twice a week for the first month and every other day for the second month, said Kristin Gray, a freshman from Chicago, Ill.

“All the other teams read off cards,” said Clark Gray, a senior from St. Charles, Ill. “We memorized everything.”

Despite nerves and some minor technical difficulties, the BYU-Idaho team found themselves with an armful of awards.

“The judges give you awards on who’s the best — who does the best projects and who has the best sustainable SIFE team,” Meteer said. “In our league, out of the six trophies that we could have won, we won five of them.”

The BYU-I team won the most awards at the competition. The closest team after BYU-I’s got four out of the six trophies, said Mark Nygren, SIFE advisor and Business Management faculty member.

The team will be going on to nationals in Kansas City, Mo., May 21-23.