District 11 FFA Events at Curtis

District 11 FFA Events at Curtis

FFA students from Maywood, Medicine Valley and Hayes Center FFA chapters judge goats at the District 11 FFA Livestock Judging Contest at the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture. (Emily Grote / NCTA student photo)
FFA students from Maywood, Medicine Valley and Hayes Center FFA chapters judge goats at the District 11 FFA Livestock Judging Contest at the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture. (Emily Grote / NCTA student photo)

Nov. 16, 2020

By Mary Crawford, NCTA News editor

CURTIS, Neb. – A college campus in Curtis was the site recently of academic contests for nearly 500 FFA members from 34 high schools in two FFA districts.

The Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture hosted in-person and virtual Career Development Events (CDE’s) for FFA Districts 9 and 11, said Doug Smith, NCTA’s associate professor of Animal Science and Agriculture Education.

District 11 had CDE’s last Thursday in Livestock Evaluation, Agriscience, and Natural Resources for 222 FFA students on 22 teams from 17 high schools in southwest Nebraska, said Smith.

Schools in District 11 are:  Arapahoe/Holbrook, Bertrand-Loomis (BerMis), Cambridge, Chase County (Imperial), Cozad, Dundy County-Stratton, Elwood, Eustis-Farnam, Hayes Center, Hitchcock County, Lexington, Maywood, McCook, Medicine Valley, Southern Valley, Southwest, and Wauneta-Palisade.

The next day, on Friday, District 9 contests were in Livestock Evaluation, Farm Business Management and Agronomy. (Those results were pending at press time on Monday).

Vicky Armstrong, Maywood FFA Chapter advisor and District 11 representative, said students and advisors were glad to have contests in person.

“We are extremely grateful to NCTA and their faculty, staff, and students for their assistance in putting on our fall contests and allowing us to be on campus,” Armstrong said. “Any opportunity we have for contests in person this year is what our students need.”

The FFA members rotated through the contest with their individual chapters assigned to separate locations designed with COVID-19 precautions in place to include social distancing and required facial masks to be worn inside buildings.

“We appreciate all of Dr. Smith’s work on scheduling our schools to follow all of the health guidelines,” Armstrong said. “I feel our contests ran smoothly throughout the day.”

The logistics and task of designing in-person contests for hundreds of FFA students during a pandemic was a unique challenge. NCTA coordinated all of components for in-person and virtual Livestock Judging for both days.

Agriscience and Natural Resources contests on Thursday were organized by the District 11 agricultural education teachers and were held in large classrooms of the Nebraska Agriculture Industry Education Center.

Agriscience is for freshmen, only, and includes a written exam plus a practicum in the topic area of plant systems.

The contest drew 64 individuals from 19 teams.

Agriscience Top 5 teams:

  1. BerMis FFA
  2. Maywood FFA
  3. Southwest FFA
  4. Imperial FFA & Wauneta-Palisade FFA (tied)

Agriscience Top 10 individuals:

  1. Gracianne Wilcox, BerMis
  2. Carly Stewart, BerMis
  3. Chloe Anderson, BerMis
  4. Haydn Farr, Maywood
  5. Bella Maddox, Imperial
  6. Jeremiah Ingison, Maywood
  7. Nathan Rippe, Southwest
  8. Stella Heapy, Medicine Valley
  9. Chase Bryant, Wauneta-Palisade
  10. Gage Gerlach, Maywood

Natural Resources had 141 individuals from 41 teams in the topic focuses on soil and wildlife.

Natural Resources Top 5 teams:

  1. Cambridge FFA
  2. BerMis FFA
  3. Hayes Center FFA
  4. Southwest FFA
  5. Wauneta-Palisade FFA

Natural Resources Top 10 individuals:

  1. Autumn Deterding, Cambridge
  2. Megan TenBensel, Cambridge
  3. Alexis Richmond, Imperial
  4. Johanna Ford, BerMis
  5. Jordyn Cross, Cambridge
  6. Hunter Ummel, Cambridge
  7. Drake Hermanson, BerMis
  8. Tucker Gillespie, McCook
  9. Jordan Hilmer, BerMis
  10. Leah Schutz, BerMis

Livestock Judging was conducted at the indoor arena of the Everett Stencil Livestock Teaching Center. With the assistance of the NCTA Livestock Judging Team, all six classes of livestock were recorded so the virtual contest could occur in addition to in-person presence.

Assisting with handling livestock, taking oral reasons and tabulations were students from NCTA’s Animal Science and Agricultural Education courses.

 "The students were just excited to be able to compete in person and not have to do everything over Zoom or online,” Armstrong said.

 “We did adjust our contests for those students who are quarantined so they could still compete, but overall, a very successful contest day for us in District 11.”

 An online contest, resource and scoring system for FFA Career Development Event and 4-H Judging Contests handles the logistics of scanning and processing the contest results for various contests through judgingcard.com, explained Dr. Smith.

“It was a great day for the kids to be on campus and to participate in some FFA contests, in a still COVID-friendly way,” Smith said, of the back-to-back daylong events.

Partners across the state helped in providing livestock for the judging contest, which included feedlot cattle, breeding heifers, breeding and market sheep, swine, and goats. The animals came from a commercial feed yard, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources (CASNR), NCTA and producers from central and southwest Nebraska.

Livestock Judging for Junior High (7-8th), Jr. division (9-10th), and Sr. division (11-12th):

Junior High Top 3 of 8 Teams:

  1. Imperial FFA
  2. McCook FFA
  3. Southern Valley FFA

Jr. High Top 5 of 46 Students:

  1. Tayley Becker, Southern Valley
  2. Allie Stitt, McCook
  3. Tristan Jablonski, Imperial
  4. Jamie Gittlein, Imperial; Odessa Zadina, Imperial (tied)

Juniors Top 5 of 16 Teams:

  1. Southwest FFA
  2. Maywood FFA
  3. Cambridge FFA
  4. McCook FFA
  5. Cozad FFA

Juniors Top 12 of 107 Students:

  1. Nathan Rippe, Southwest
  2. Haydn Farr, Maywood
  3. Brenna Deterding, Cambridge
  4. Kamden Bose, Southern Valley
  5. Grace Schimmels, Eustis-Farnam
  6. Kooper Pohl, Cozad
  7. Jeremiah Ingison, Maywood
  8.  Trenton Custard, Southwest
  9. Conner Snyder, McCook
  10. Makayla Pate, McCook
  11. Hayden Russman, Cozad
  12. Madison Woehrle, Eustis-Farnam

Senior Division, Top 3 of 14 Teams:

  1. Elwood FFA
  2. Cozad FFA
  3. BerMis FFA

Seniors, Top 5 of 54 Students:

  1. Evan Niemeier, Elwood
  2. Gracie Schneider, Cozad  
  3. Abby Scholz, Bermis
  4. McKenna Renner, Maywood
  5. Colby Hoskovec, Wauneta-Palisade

The Nebraska State FFA Convention in April 2020 was canceled, and events and competitions were conducted virtually or in online submissions through the spring and summer. Then, late last month, the 93rd National FFA Convention and Expo, was conducted virtually, including the presentation of 4,136 American FFA Degrees. Last week, the Nebraska Department of Education announced the Nebraska State Convention 2021 will be virtual, too.

Part of the University of Nebraska system, the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture is a two-year institution with a statewide mission of preparing students for successful careers in agriculture, veterinary technology and related industries. NCTA is known for its affordable tuition, high job-placement rate for its graduates, and for the success of student teams in competitive activities including crops judging, ranch horse events, livestock judging, shotgun sports, stock dog trials, and intercollegiate rodeo. The college is consistently ranked as one of the best two-year schools in the nation.

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