EIU Department of School of Business

Holley High School Competitions

Our 2025 Grand Champion school Mount Zion with their instructor, AnnaMarie Hanes

View past Holley Competition winners here

The 2026 competition is coming soon. We will again have three divisions: business ethics, business applications, and sales & entrepreneurship. 

• In the ethics division, student teams will collaboratively analyze, present, and then respond to questions posed by a panel of judges regarding a common business ethics case all teams will evaluate. The case will be prepared on-site, the day of the competition.
• In the business application division, student teams will collaboratively solve common problems utilizing spreadsheets, word processing, and presentation software applications
• The sales & entrepreneurship division will be a professional sales competition with students pitching an existing product to a panel of judges

Students will compete against teams from high schools and high school business organizations across Illinois. The experience promises to challenge students’ ethical reasoning, application skills, and presenting skills, as well as provide a wonderful networking opportunity. In the end, we aim to raise students’ awareness of the importance of corporate social responsibility and hone their abilities with business applications and presenting to a group. 

Prizes will be awarded to the top three case presentation teams. All competitors on a team will receive a certificate of competition and an EIU t-shirt.

Debuting last year, a grand champion school will also be awarded to the overall, best performing school who fields at least one team in each category.

Invitations will be sent out in late November of 2026.

Note on Registration: We anticipate reaching our registration capacity with this year's competition.  To address this, a pre-registration period will be open for past-competing schools to assure a spot for them.  After the pre-registration, general registration will be open to all but limited on a first-come, first-served basis.

Competition Day: February 27, 2026

If you are interested in participating, please contact Dr. Robinson at nrobinson@eiu.edu for more information or to be added to the contact list.