GC FFA Attends the 96th Nebraska FFA Convention

Karma Peterson, GC FFA Reporter 23-24

The 2024 Garden County State FFA members traveled and arrived in Lincoln late on Tuesday, April 2nd. On Wednesday, members competed in the Agriscience Fair, Environmental and Natural Resources, Agribusiness, and Farm Management. The Hall of Chapters girls also set up and presented. We went to the UNL welcome on the east campus and ate ice cream from the Dairy Store. Then we all attended the opening evening session. The keynote speaker, Rob Jones, spoke about his recovery from an IED injury and how he had resilience while encouraging us to be resilient as we face life’s challenges. He also spoke about how one moment can change your life forever. 

On Thursday, members attended session two, where they received their Connecting Chapters recognition certificate. After that, we all went to the Lincoln Children's Zoo where we rode the train, fed the giraffes, and viewed many other exotic animals. After this, we went to session three and members competed in Agriscience. We attended the Nebraska FFA Foundation Expo and visited agriculture businesses from across the state of Nebraska. That evening we attended session four, listened to Kelly Barnes talk about developing leadership skills in agriculture, and finished the day bowling and playing laser tag as our yearly FFA reward event. 

The Livestock Evaluation Team had an early Friday morning attending competition at 6:00 a.m. The rest of the chapter attends the morning session with John Cook, the Nebraska Volleyball coach. He encouraged us to compete with ultimate trust and to inflate instead of deflating our teammates. Members got to eat lunch in the hay market area, and in the next session, we watched four of our seniors receive their state degrees. After all of this excitement, we returned to Oshkosh.