The 2017 Business Games concluded on Sunday, 15 October with the Tenpin Bowling and Dodgeball events. It wrapped up an enthralling sixteen days of action.
This year we had just over 200 teams from 43 companies/organisations around Wellington get involved. It was great to see the variety of organisations taking part; from IT giants like Oracle, Datacom and Fronde, government departments such as DIA, MFAT and IRD, law firms Kahui Legal, AJ Park and Grant Thornton, banks ANZ and Kiwibank, to smaller businesses like Awesome Bounce Ltd and Margin Fuel. All companies, no matter what size or industry can be proud of how their teams performed in the events.
Here are a few of my highlights from the 2017 Games:
- Datacom’s ridiculous depth in motorsport talent at the Go Karting event – first, second, third, fourth… and two other teams in the top nine!
- A hard-earned and well-deserved title defense under emotional circumstances for Fronde in Indoor Cricket
- A hugely entertaining Amazing Urban Race. This event has been growing in popularity and promises to be bigger than ever next year
- A slick performance in wet conditions by Civil Aviation Authority to win by a healthy margin in Clay Target Shooting. A long awaited event victory for CAA!
- The depth of talent across the board in Indoor Netball – many of the teams were top notch and it often felt like watching a National-level tournament. Kudos to Courier Post for winning on the day
- The Open Indoor Soccer – After pool play, Loyalty NZ looked like they’d breeze to victory but had to work hard to beat a determined Datacom side 6-5 in the final
- A dominant all-round performance by Sport Wellington in Corporate Challenge – easy wins in the physical challenge and then backed it up with second in the quiz. Courier Post’s engineering skills in the mini-challenge were also mightily impressive!
- Enjoying a Friday afternoon beer with the sodden Golf teams in the clubhouse at Shandon Golf Course. They braved some fairly consistent rain on the course for 4-5 hours!
- Kiwibank’s golden run – victory in both Golf events on Friday, 13 October and a victory the next morning in Mixed Indoor Soccer. Would it be enough to earn them overall victory?
- Grant Thornton NZ’s slick teamwork to go undefeated in Dodgeball – just a day after the majority of their exhausted team had been beaten in the Mixed Indoor Soccer final
It’s great to go to a Business Games event and see an experienced team of seasoned athletes perform at a high standard to sweep aside opposition, but my favourite thing to see at an event is people who are trying a sport for the first time. Through effective team communication and formulation of strategy, the beginners invariably improve their performance and always seem to have a blast. That’s what the Business Games are all about and I hope everyone that took part was able to take something away from their time at this year’s Games; whether it be a medal or simply an enjoyable, memorable, team-building experience with workmates in the sporting arena.
On to the overall results! After an early victory in Go Karting and several other podium spots, Datacom were looking to be comfortably on top of the standings come the end of Business Games. That was until Kiwibank had three event wins on the trot to nudge their points total up to 2084. However, Kiwibank’s valiant effort was still too little, too late. Datacom had a 200 point lead heading into the last day but extended their total out to 2766 points by winning Tenpin Bowling. On 1689 points, the third-placed organisation was Civil Aviation Authority – a thoroughly deserved effort as they have shown steady improvement each year in every event they enter.
Congratulations to Datacom for once again being the Business Games top overall organisation! It has been a remarkable run by Datacom – I will need to get in touch with previous organisers to find out exactly how many times Datacom has won top organisation now!
Thank you to all who took part this year, especially to coordinators who put the word of Business Games out to their workplace and pass on all the information to team members; your efforts are invaluable!
See you all next year 🙂