Tuesday, May 7, 2024
Four Granbury High School students have accomplished a goal they have been working toward all year.
Seniors Cadence Morisette, Sarah Boyd, Kelley Sanders and Andrew Nickell placed 10th in the Senior Agricultural Quiz contest during Texas FFA’s State Leadership Career Development Events (LDE) in Huntsville Friday, Dec. 1.
The Texas chapter of Future Farmers of America is the nation’s largest state FFA association with a membership of more than 156,000 active FFA members, according to the Texas FFA news release. FFA programs teach skills in leadership, career development and personal growth. FFA gives students the opportunity to practically apply classroom knowledge to real-world experiences through local, state and national competitions.
According to the Texas FFA Association website, Leadership Development Events focus on creating situations for members to demonstrate their abilities in public speaking, decision making, communication and their knowledge of agriculture and the FFA organization. Team and individual events are used to reinforce what is taught in agricultural science classrooms.
All LDE events have elimination rounds at the district and area before the state level competition.
Granbury’s Senior Agricultural Quiz team qualified for the state competition by finishing first in one of the state’s 66 district competitions and first in one of 12 area competitions.
In the statewide tournament, more than 5,000 entries were submitted in a total of 15 different events, which reflect classroom instruction in basic leadership skills.
Trey Keys, GHS FFA sponsor, told the HCN that Texas FFA had previously sent out a breakdown of every contest, noting the Senior FFA Quiz LDE event had 885 teams that had entered this year.
“Each team is four people, and they add their scores up,” Keys said. “Of 885, 24 (made it to state) through the elimination process, so there were only 24 teams at state.”
Keys explained the competition involved a 150-question test, which is divided into three different categories.
"A third of the test is over FFA knowledge, another third of the test is over parliamentary procedure, and then the remaining third is over a variety of questions that pertain to current agriculture issues, like farm facts and possibly current legislation issues that affect rural Texas,” he explained.
Keys said he is impressed with his team, especially for doing so well on a “tough test.”
“You know, to take a test and study for something like that, they're definitely self-motivated, self-driven kind of kids that want to be successful and want to compete,” he said. “We want all of our kids to be successful, so it's good that they got to witness that. They're all seniors, and they've been trying very hard to accomplish that goal, so it was good to see that they made it to state.”
Keys added that he trains several different teams, and the goal is to get as many teams to the state competition as possible.
"This year at area, we had four teams and the other three teams that we took were just one place out of advancing to state,” he added. “So, we're on the verge of getting a lot of teams to state, and that's what we like to see at Granbury — success.”
