Jennifer Jack
FFA Reporter
Submitted April 30, 2008
What do Farm Business Management, Floriculture, Agriculture Mechanics and Dairy Judging all have in common? They are all different Career Development Events that students from Moapa Valley competed in at the Nevada FFA State Convention.
On March 26-29, over 250 FFA members from all over the state gathered at the University of Nevada Reno campus to participate in the 73rd annual Nevada State Convention. Fifteen of these students were from the local Moapa Valley High School (MVHS).
This conference is a week-long experience for the students. It is a time when they can grow as leaders in leadership workshops, a place where they can compete in Career Development competitions, and a place where they get to have a blast with other students with like interests.
Now let me take some time to explain these things we call Career Development Events (CDE’s). There are over twenty five different CDE’s for a student to choose from and compete in.
Members of the local FFA chapter competed in eight different events. We competed in Agriculture Mechanics and our guys did great. We took four young men who showed their welding cutting, electrical and irrigation skills. We took a Dairy Foods Judging team, which is of course the contest featured on the movie Napoleon Dynamite. In fact, the cow did get into the onion patch in one of the milk samples!
We took a Horse Judging team, a Creed Speaker and a Meats Identification team. We had a Floriculture team who learned the different kinds of flowers and arrangements. They had to put together arrangements and present them to a panel of judges. All their arrangements looked beautiful and made our bus ride home smell like we were in a flower shop.
Our Farm Business Management team took third in the state. Our Dairy Judging team fell just a bit short from the first place title, but landed in the second place position in the state. All of our teams worked extremely hard and we did great.
During the State Convention, we were able to attend great leadership workshops. We also attended sessions to discuss issues within the state, have college presentations and have motivational speakers. During one of the sessions, we were able to highlight and recognize one of our state officers who is a Moapa Valley Chapter Alumnus, Lacey Sproul.
The State Convention was definitely a lot of work, and we were pretty busy most of the time. Don’t get me wrong, there is always time to party… FFA style! On the first day there was a “Fun Zone,” for students to compete in fun activities. The second day of the conference all 250 members got to go to a skating rink to show off their sweet skills (or lack therof)! The third day, we were able to shake our groove things with new friends from all over the state at a wild and crazy dance party.
This week long conference was an unforgettable experience for all those who participated.
