The Blanco FFA has spent the past two weeks competing in district and area competitions. With 16 schools competing in the Hill District FFA and over 100 schools representing the Area VII FFA, all judging competitions have proven to be extremely competitive.

On April 2nd, the Blanco FFA Dairy Team, consisting of Austin Smith, Tucker Edmondson, Aaron Thomson, and Sam Ruiz, traveled to Tarleton State University to compete in the Area VII Dairy Contest. At the end of the day, Blanco would place 8th overall in the area, while also taking 2nd place in district. Individually, Austin would place 18th.

The following weekend would see the Blanco FFA Livestock and Meats teams competing at Texas A&M University in their respective area competitions. When results were announced, Blanco would place 3rd in the area in livestock and 1st in district. Team members included Keaton Dodd, Kaleigh Anderson, Carrie Lockwood, and Quaid Haack. Kaleigh would lead the way ranking 6th overall, while Keaton and Quaid would place 16th and 17th respectively. Blanco’s meats team of Alisa Guler, Sarah Isenberg, and Jared Newby would also place high finishing 13th in the area and 3rd in district.

Finally, this past week the regional and area contest for wildlife was held at Angelo State University. Ross McCormick, Jeff Haas, Corey Dowlearn, and Grayson Elrod would place 8th in the area and 3rd in district, while Ross would rank 16th individually.

Over the course of the next two weeks, the Blanco FFA will be competing in 5 different state contests. The Blanco FFA Entomology Team consisting of Keith Baize, Taylor McCormick, and Brooks Wyatt, will be traveling to Texas Tech University for the state entomology contest, while Kaleigh Anderson, Grayson Elrod, Keaton Dodd, Taylor McCormick, John Pepper, and Corey Dowlearn will be traveling to Hamilton to judge in the state range plant identification contest. In addition, Alisa Guler, Sarah Isenberg, Katie Baker, Ross McCormick, Jared Newby, Sam Ruiz, Claire Klepac, Aaron Thomson, Austin Smith, and Tucker Edmondson will be competing at the state range judging contest at Tarleton State University along with Blanco’s land judging team consisting of Austin Deshane, Shelby Moore, Victoria Jones, David Hostetler, Austin Thompson, Brooks Wyatt, Jeff Haas, Tanner Reddout, and Tauna Luke. Finally, the Blanco FFA Livestock Team consisting of Carrie Lockwood, Kaleigh Anderson, Keaton Dodd, and Quaid Haack will round out the week competing in the state livestock contest at Texas A&M University. In all, 29 local FFA members will be competing in the various state career development events with hopes of advancing to nationals. Advisors for the Blanco FFA are Felice and Jason Marek.