by Garrett Kiedel, Asst. Sports Editor

Manhattan College has made a name for itself in the past few years with its success Fed Cup Challenge. This year, the results were not favorable at all with Manhattan College’s team being eliminated after the first round.

Zoe McGreevy, a senior economics major, previously described the Fed Cup Challenge.

“It is a college wide challenge, that kinda acts like a club, in which a group of students and a faculty advisor get together to create a 15 minute presentation. We also prepare for 15 minutes of questions when we compete at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York at the end of October.”

Last year, the team made it to the second round of competition out of approximately 40 schools who competed. They were defeated in the second round after competing against schools with reputable histories in the competition like Pace University. This year, the team hoped to build off of the already solid results they had last year, but came up short when they were eliminated after the first round.

Senior global business major Diego Miguens commented about the results of this years competition.

“It was definitely disappointing. It was my second year doing the competition, so I definitely had higher expectations than last year. But I know we did a lot more work this year compared to last. We met a lot more this year and that makes me proud. Not only did I learn more, but the new members were able to as well and know how high the bar is for Manhattan College next year. Hopefully they’ll be able to take what they learned this year with them next year and make it to the finals.”

Richard Gerling is a sophomore economics and finance major who competed in the Fed Cup for the first time this year. He commented on how one of the biggest strengths of this year’s team was chemistry.

“One of the major strengths of the team this year was our chemistry. We met every morning at 6 a.m., did work until 7:30 and then got breakfast together and then went back to working until 9 or 10 a.m. So we’ve all become really close friends, which really showed in the presentation.”

McGreevy also had high praise for how the team worked together.

“Everyone on the team is extremely hard working, extremely motivated to learn and to teach. We all specialized in different topics and not only were people focused on learning their topics, but they were also focused on making sure everyone else was understanding it as well.That was the best aspect of our teamwork,” he said.

Miguens saw the team as extremely strong for this year’s competition, looking back at how the team worked together.

“I think we are all just so smart and talented and our capabilities are so expansive that sometime we could even bump heads with each other. We would all be saying something that is right but just in different ways. All of those moments we used as constructive criticism to better us in the long run,” Miguens said.

One of the biggest positives of the competition is the vast array of lessons and real world experience gained through the whole experience.

“From the Fed Challenge, I’ve learned how to speak in front of people,” said Gerling. “We went to JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs and presented, so doing it in front of two judges was a lot less stressful. Additionally, I’ve learned how to work with a team and developed time management skills. Towards the end right before the competition, I was meeting with the team for six hours a day, which was a lot especially when I’m taking six classes.”

Gerling will be one of the returning members for the competition next year, and has taken over the role of leading the group.

“This upcoming year, I’ll be leading the team. It’ll be hard to follow Zoe, as she was such a great leader and really was able to make a great team. So hopefully, I’ll be able to do as well as her and have a good upcoming year. For this upcoming year, we’ve begun meeting already two times a week in the morning for an hour each time. We have a lot of new members joining, so the team is growing despite that four seniors are leaving. This past year, we met in the spring semester and summer, so hopefully by starting this early, we’ll be able to have an even stronger showing next year,” Gerling said.

Editor’s Note: Richard Gerling is a contributor for The Quadrangle.