Advertisement These contests were formally known as judging contests, and the name change was made to reflect the focus on skills that students are demonstrating for the career field in which they are competing.
The following members competed on the teams below:
The Dairy Cattle Evaluation did the best of all teams, placing 12th out of 53 teams and received a gold rating. Reed Holthaus was the top individual, placing 21st out of 188 students, and Jake Schmidt placed 54th.
On the poultry team, Tiffani Nierling was the top individual for Bangor, placing 32nd out of 142 students, and Ethan Rueckheim placed 50th. The top individual for the forestry team was Dan Gollnick, placing 25th out of 64 students, and Sawyer Kerkman placed 29th.
Many of these students needed to compete at the regional competition held at UW-Platteville on March 27 in order to qualify to compete at the state contest. One team that only competed at Platteville was the Junior Dairy team of Jennifer Heuer, Jared Heuer, Matt Christopherson and Scott Christopherson. Jennifer Heuer was the third best individual overall at the competition and received a trophy for her efforts.
In addition to competing at contests, the members have been busy with other activities. The middle school members attended a leadership conference March 28-29 held at the Eau Claire Ramada Inn. The Experiencing, Discovery, Growth and Excellence conference is designed to begin middle school members on a path to achieve success in the high school FFA. Skills the students learned included evaluating possible outcomes from taking a personal risk, determining future FFA involvement, describing the interaction between relationships, respecting and decision-making and growing as a person. Members who attended the conference included Danielle Piper, Tanner Johnson, Andy Manke, Tyler Page and Tyler Rentz.
Banquet
The Bangor FFA banquet was held on Tuesday, April 1. State parliamentarian Nick Palkowski gave the keynote speech on leadership and many of the members were recognized for their achievements. The Friend of the FFA award went to Dr. Tom Filla of the Bangor Vet Clinic for his help with student job-shadowing experiences and guest speaking to the animal science classes. The Dekalb Award went to Brittney Ammerman, Outstanding Senior was Jordan Langrehr and Outstanding Junior was Ashley Anderson.
The Star Chapter Farmer was awarded to Jennifer Heuer, the Chapter Star in Agribusiness was awarded to Adam Anderson and the Star in Ag Placement was awarded to Dan Gollnick.
Rewards trip
One of the changes this year’s group of seniors made was to take their senior rewards trip to the Twin Cities instead of Chicago. Senior members that qualified for the trip during the first weekend of April included Brittney Ammerman, Adam Anderson, Dan Gollnick, Kriston Siemianowski, Tasha Everson, Shelly Piper, Jen Heuer, Josie Pfaff and Jordan Langrehr, and they toured the Rochester Meat Company meat processing plant and saw how hamburgers are processed on a large scale.
Next, they stopped at Cabela’s in Owatonna, Minn., and learned about the taxidermy mounts in the store and did some outdoor recreation supply shopping. Later in the evening, the members went to the Mall of America to shop and ride amusement park rides. The next day they toured Como Zoo in St. Paul and toured the main campus of the University of Minnesota and the farm campus as well.
That evening, the members enjoyed a meal at the Machine Shed in Woodbury. The Machine Shed is an agriculturally themed restaurant and patrons can purchase toy tractors and other agriculture memorabilia. When Sunday came, it was time to head back to Bangor. All the students who went on the trip enjoyed the experience.
Upcoming activities
Upcoming activities for the Bangor FFA include their annual Food for America program with the first-grade students. This program is designed to educate the students where their food comes from.
The FFA chapter plans on having a spring picnic or two later in May. The state convention will be held June 10-12 at the Allient Energy Center in Madison; this year they have three members that will be receiving their state FFA degrees and those members are Kelliann Blazek, Jordan Langrehr and Jennifer Heuer. They also have four students who were selected for the state FFA choir: Ashley Anderson, Jesse Rabuck, Siera Holzhausen and Sawyer Kerkman.
“The members have been very active this spring in FFA activities and should be proud of all of their accomplishments,” said Robert Ickler, Bangor FFA advisor.
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