Morgan Hill Future Farmers of America hosted The Santa Clara
Section’s FFA Opening and Closing Ceremonies Contest, which was
held at Live Oak High School Thursday.
By Clayton Carlson – Special to the Times
Morgan Hill Future Farmers of America hosted The Santa Clara Section’s FFA Opening and Closing Ceremonies Contest, which was held at Live Oak High School Thursday. The competition included two Morgan Hill Chapters, Morgan Hill FFA, which is the name of the agricultural program at Live Oak High School, and Sobrato FFA, which is the agriculture program at Sobrato. Also among them were Campbell FFA, Gilroy FFA and Hollister FFA.
The opening and closing ceremonies are a time-honored tradition in The FFA. They are used to properly open an official FFA meeting to business as well as to properly close an official FFA meeting. There were five Chapter Officer Teams, five Greenhand Teams, which is open only to first year FFA members, and nine Open Teams, which are open to all FFA members. In the contest, participants are graded in five categories: memorization, enunciation, team uniformity, presentation and overall job. Morgan Hill FFA’s Officer Team took 4th place, the two Open Teams received third and fifth, and the Greenhand Team took a 3rd place. In individual awards, Nikki Dronek of Live Oak High School received best overall chapter president, and Kean Vaziry, also of Live Oak, earned best overall open team treasurer.
Then, Saturday morning, the Morgan Hill FFA Officer Team; President: Nikki Dronek, Vice-President: Danielle Budde, Secretary: Lysette Abarca, Treasurer: Cody Kent, Reporter: Clayton Carlson, Historian: Kimberly Zuchowski, Sentinel: Steven Baird and Advisors Erin Larrus and Kendra Beams attended the South Coast Region’s Chapter Officer Leadership Conference in Hollister. At this two-day conference, students attended various workshops, which promoted premier leadership, personal growth and career success as well as returning to their schools with a new outlook on life.
All in attendance also had the opportunity to hear various keynote speakers, such as Adrienne Bradley, the past State FFA President and current California’s National FFA Officer Candidate. She was also joined by the State and Regional FFA leaders who attended to help make this conference one to remember. The conference wouldn’t be complete however, without the Saturday night program where the different schools had a chance to perform a lip sync routine, and a dance to help liven up the students.
