Soccer teams from 12 business schools across the country and abroad came to Sachem Field this weekend to compete in the 13th annual "MBA World Cup."
According to Kevin Kavanagh T '97, one of the event's organizers, the schools represented in the soccer tournament were Northwestern University, Columbia University, Stanford University, Cornell University, London Business School, Yale University, Cranfield University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Tufts University, Boston College and Chicago University.
This year Tuck's sponsors included Braxton Associates, Booz Allen & Hamilton, Inc., Lehman Brothers Inc., AT&T, BancBoston Capital and the CSC Index, he said.
Kavanagh said the tournament is an opportunity to "network with other schools."
"We're sort of out of the way of a lot of the other schools," he said. The MBA World Cup "is an opportunity for us to bring some other MBA students into our neighborhood and show them a good time."
The Tuck School of Business, which has won the competition for the past two years, sent two student teams and one team composed of alumni to the competition, Kavanagh said.
This year, Tuck was disappointed by the tournament's results, he said.
Tuck's A team lost to Stanford, the team that eventually won the tournament, in the quarterfinals. And the B team had a poor showing, losing both games it played in the tournament, Kavanagh said.
He said Tuck's alumni team lost two games and tied one.
Kavanagh said he wasn't taking the team's loss too seriously.
"It's not the primary focus [of the tournament] to win," he said. "It would have been nice, but at least we lost to the eventual winner."
Associate Tuck Dean Bob Hansen said this weekend's soccer matches are not the only events Tuck hosts for its fellow business schools.
Tuck has hosted a winter carnival which includes sled races for at least 12 years and a hockey match for five or 10 years, Hansen said.
"We usually have a faculty team [at the winter carnival] but we don't always do that well," he said.
Although the tournaments give business students a chance to socialize, Kavanagh described them as "pretty competitive."
"A lot of the business schools have people who played Division I in college," he said.
Hansen also said things can get pretty intense on the field.
"The joke is that some other business school has recruited some former professional hockey player so they can win the hockey tournament," Hansen said.
