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BYU accounting team wins 1st at national PwC competition

BYU

BYU's accounting team won first place at the National PwC Challenge competition in Washington, D.C. (Facebook Screenshot)

BYU Accounting's five-person team, Lotus Solutions, won first place at the National PwC Challenge in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 15 and 16.

This is BYU's fourth national award, making it the college with the most PwC victories.

Team members Corbin Stott, Ben Green, McKell Anderson, Adam Mahas and Hayden Holbrook competed against four other universities.

Mahas said the team learned a lot about teamwork and real-world issues and that the members worked hard to get to this point both individually and as a team.

'I think our strength in the competition was the Q&A session after our presentation,' Mahas said. 'We really nailed that part. Us winning shows a lot about how good BYU's accounting program really is.'

Mahas gave credit to the team's faculty adviser, John Barrick, who helped the students prepare for all the technical aspects of the competition.

Hayden Holbook also expressed his gratitude for Professor Barrick and the BYU community as a whole.

'We were the only team there that had to do a Facebook competition, and so we are the only ones that can say that we had the direct help of all of BYU's student body as well as our family and friends in order to even make it to Nationals,' Holbrook said.

Holbrook said that from the beginning the team felt they could win at Nationals because they seemed to work so well together. He said that participating in the Challenge was an 'awesome experience' and the team was excited to go across the country and represent BYU and the Accounting Program.

According to the BYU Accounting Facebook page, 'BYU has been a National Finalist 9 of the 13 years the competition has been held. By comparison, Wisconsin has been a National Finalist six times.'

The BYU team participated in a Facebook video contest in November to gain the fifth spot for the competition. BYU received the most Facebook votes and earned the final spot.

The team came into the competition from the fifth and final spot, but they returned home with the first-place prize.