Huron FFA Horse Judging Team wins State

This past April 14-16, 2013, the South Dakota FFA Association held it’s 85th Annual FFA Convention. The Huron FFA Chapter had 27 members participating in various Career Development Events over the three days. We had members participating in the following CDE’s: Agronomy, Floriculture, Livestock, Milk Quality and Products, Natural Resources, Nursery/Landscape and Horse Evaluation.

This year the Horse Judging Team, which consisted of Dana Duvall, Bailey Schoenfelder, Sierra Goergen and Jessica Broer placed first overall. They placed first out of 48 Horse Judging Teams from around the state of South Dakota.

Mike Postma, Huron FFA advisor, said, “This group of FFA members had been working extremely hard all spring to accomplish this. This was their goal going into the judging season. I am extremely proud of this group as well as the rest of the FFA members that competed at the State Convention.”

In addition to winning the Team Award, all 4 of them received individual awards as well. Dana Duvall placed 4th overall and received a Gold Award. Bailey Schoenfelder placed 20th overall and received a Silver Award. Sierra Goergen placed 26th and received a Silver Award and Jessica Broer received a Bronze Award.

Before these four individuals could compete at the State Competition, they had to earn their way on to the Judging team. Postma said, “We had 9 members judging horses this year, and all 9 of them improved with each and every competition we went to. It was a very close competition to decide who would be on the team and it came down to the very last competition we went to.” Other horse judgers were: Kim Mastel, Braedy Edleman, Riley Johnson, Hayley Wipf and Elizabeth Schley.

With this State Championship, the Horse Judging team has earned a trip to Louisville, Kentucky this October/November to compete at the National FFA Convention against the best FFA horse judging teams from across the country.