The Copper Country Intermediate School District (CCISD) Career and Technical Education (CTE) Business and Entrepreneurial program successfully hosted its first-ever "Pike Tank" event on Tuesday, March 3, 2026, at the Hancock Community Hub. The day-long entrepreneurial showcase brought together dozens of high school junior and senior CTE students from Baraga, Houghton, and Keweenaw counties to pitch original product prototypes to a panel of local business leaders and industry experts.
Created as a spin on the popular television show Shark Tank, the partnership with Breakwater Federal Credit Union challenged students to apply classroom concepts to real-world scenarios, build networking skills, and develop the confidence needed to share their ideas publicly.
While CTE programs regularly take learning beyond school walls, such as construction students building houses or automotive students repairing vehicles, applying business concepts requires a unique, creative approach. CTE students were entirely hands-on in the execution of the Pike Tank event.
Working alongside industry experts, the students organized the logistics, established the branding, drafted press releases, built the daily agenda, and created logo options. The participating students even voted on the official Pike Tank logo, which was proudly featured on the event t-shirts worn by all participants.
“Obviously, this is patterned kind of after Shark Tank, the TV show. But we wanted to make it different, and since we don’t have sharks in our freshwater here, we decided that the pike kind of embodied those characteristics,” said Steve Kass, CTE Business and Entrepreneurship Instructor at the CCISD Career Tech Center in Hancock. “The light bulb kind of went off for a lot of them, and they got very excited about seeing the potential that they have now. I think that’s going to be the best lasting effect from this experience: building confidence.”
The Pitch Competition and Winning Innovators
Working in pairs, students identified common challenges in their daily lives and developed tangible business solutions. Notable projects included an atmospheric water generator and a color-changing lamp incorporating light therapy concepts to help students get into the proper studying mindset.
The day concluded with a final round of presentations, where the top contestants pitched to the "Pikes." Lukas Axford (Lake Linden-Hubbell High School) and Davis Moyle (Houghton High School) delivered the winning pitch. The duo masterfully presented a specialized scraper designed to clear ice and snow buildup from ski and snowboard bindings.
“It messes with how your feet sit in your bindings, and as a person who’s had a lot of knee injuries, I need my feet to sit correctly," Moyle explained to the judges. "That’s why we kind of made it, and for the most part, it sounds like a pretty good idea.”
Students echoed the value of the collaborative process.
“If you come up with something, the other person can bounce off. It let us grow and make the product better overall,” added Kiersten Lassila, a junior at Calumet High School who helped design the atmospheric water generator. “It was kind of cool coming up with it because you had to come up with something new, so it really got our entrepreneurial mindsets going.”
The success of Pike Tank was made possible through strong community collaboration with many partners, including key organizing roles filled by Breakwater Federal Credit Union, the Michigan Small Business Development Center (SBDC), and Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa Community College (KBOCC).
Throughout the day, students cycled through breakout sessions in the gymnasium, simulating the various stages of business creation. Representatives from KBOCC, Michigan SBDC, and Breakwater guided students through essential entrepreneurial tactics, from public relations and marketing to compliance and long-term planning.
Keynote speakers Marty Fittante, CEO of InvestUP, and Jim Baker, MTU Research and Innovation Senior Associate Vice President, opened the event by addressing the unique challenges and opportunities for young entrepreneurs in the Upper Peninsula.
“We are limited in resources. We are limited in talent resources, we’re limited in capital resources, we’re limited in logistical convenience to major markets,” Baker told the students. “It’s going to take a team to solve those problems. They don’t have to, nor can they, solve those problems by themselves... If the students don’t take anything else away from today, that’s my hope: that they realize they own the future and they can solve these problems, and they need to exercise creative skills to do that.”