Creek Valley students win Area Range Judging awards

Several local high school students won awards this month at the annual Area Range Judging.

Entering its 61st year, on average more than a thousand students take part in six area Range Judging contests across the state, with another 400 competing in the state competition, which will be held Sept. 30 in Scotts Bluff County.

The Creek Valley FFA Senior Team won Grand Champion Team with their team members Keith Everitt, Josh Schielvelbein, Chandra Smith and Noemi Marin. Alyssa Sweley from the Scottsbluff FFA was the Individual Grand Champion in the Senior Class.

Creek Valley FFA Junior Team of Pierce Leef, Sami Schmid, Jordy Koenen and Payje Misegadis took first place in the Junior Team competition. The Junior Class individual winner was Sheridan Wilson from the Arthur 4-H.

The judging was held Sept. 16 south of Potter with 11 schools from across the Nebraska Panhandle attending. A total of 127 students and four adults participated with 79 Junior Class, consisting of high school freshmen and sophomores, and 48 Senior Class, high school juniors and seniors, divided into 22 and 16 teams respectively. Each student participates both individually and as a member of a team for their schools.

While crops are easy to pick out with their perfect rows of corn and wheat, range land is not as easy to define and covers a little more than 50 percent of the state.

During range judging students have the opportunity to identify up to 24 different plants and determine several characteristics of each plant such as origin (native or introduced), and life span (annual, biennial, perennial). Over the course of eight judging stations, four of which are plant stations, students also judged three range sites and a range map.

For more information, visit the SRM website at http://www.nesrm.org.