Facing A New Challenge: Land Judging

FFA is more than just a regular school club. It is an organization that impacts people’s lives for the better. The Lincoln FFA program, headed by Mr. Barenberg and Mrs. Hale, especially challenges kids, just like me, to push themselves and find the true meaning of the FFA colors. I myself have pushed many boundaries in my life, whether it be becoming more outgoing, learning more about agriculture related things or perseverance through the difficult times of loss. Learning these lessons through judging events, shooting sports or even in my regular everyday classes has been monumental stepping stones in my maturing as becoming the man I am today.

In eighth grade, I attended my first agriculture class, Intro to World Ag. In one session of the class, Mrs. Hale described the Ag judging teams and opportunities. I did not know much about judging teams, so it was very intriguing to me. I enjoy a challenge, and this peaked my interest as a new thing to learn and conquer. I listened, hoping maybe one judging team she described would be interesting to me.

One of the judging competitions Mrs. Hale mentioned sparked my interest — land judging. This was a different type of competition and not well known. It fascinated my interests for a couple of reasons. The first reason being that my dream job is engineering. Soils and land contour are the foundation of many different types of engineering so I knew this would greatly help me in developing skills further down the road.

Knowing this was not a well- known competition, there was no existing team. So after class, I asked Mrs. Hall if I could find a team of four, would we be able to start a land team. She said yes and I was off to find a team of four people that would join me.

It was a huge challenge but very rewarding at the same time. There were challenges for the team and Mrs. Hale, but we learned together. My eighth grade year we struggled to get through having to learn all new content. Although the challenges were tough we came from being nothing to being one place away to go to state in the district competition. My ninth grade year, we became more confident and learned more about what it takes to be successful. That year we made it to state but did not hit the mark on going to nationals. In 10th grade, we made our largest leap, bounding through district, coming in sixth place at state and making it to nationals. Last year we qualified for nationals but covid stopped nationals from happening so this year we are trying to qualify again and hopefully win.

In conclusion, FFA has taught me so many valuable lessons from determination, to making myself more outgoing, to so many valuable leadership skills. I’m so glad to be apart of this life-changing organization and look forward to many more years of wearing that blue and gold.