FFA members travel to National Convention
By: Sheila Crowley
Murray County News Staffwriter
Karlie Heezen, Kennedy Jackels, Maddie Wendland, Macy Posthuma, Makayla Rhodes, and Logan Clarke were amongst the 64,000 FFA students at this year’s National Convention held in Indianapolis. The general sessions were held at the Lucas Oil Stadium with competitions spread out at various venues around the area.
Heezen, Jackels, Wendland, Posthuma, and Rhodes made history for the MCC FFA program as the first team to win a state title and advance on to the national competition. The MCC team was among 47 teams nationally competing in the horse evaluation competition.
The team from West Dubuque, Iowa earned the national title tallying 2532 points over the two-day competition. Murray County Central garnered the second place spot with 2500 points. Just one point behind was Caney for Kansas and fourth place went to the South Dakota team from Rapid City.
Logan Clarke, junior at MCC, made the trip as well competing in Extemporaneous Speaking at the Hyatt Regency. He earned fourth place during last April’s state competition, however, the three above him dropped out, leaving Clarke the opportunity to travel to the national convention. He was amongst 46 individuals vying for the top spots in the nation.
Clarke competed on Wednesday. He was given a pool of 18 topics. From there Clarke drew three and of those three he chose one to write a four to six-minute speech. He was given 30 minutes to compile his information and ten minutes of technology use. Clarke was required to have some sort of resources to back up his theory. This information was brought into the competition room and given to the superintendents. They surveyed the binder for notes or anything else and then it was put aside, but yet remained in sight. Clarke’s speech was titled ‘How to envision Agriculture changing in the next ten years’. Clarke spoke on how he sees changes in food production, farm safety, and technology.
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