Students from all over Texas competed in the FFA State Competition on April 27 and May 3, including Cedar Park’s entomology and floral teams. After weeks of dedicated practice, students from the entomology team ranked 19th out of 61 teams, and floral students were ranked 37th out of 60 competing teams.

Junior Cole Schulte, who joined FFA and the entomology team last year, said that he believes this year’s placement will help pave the way for a successful future.

“I was pretty happy with our placement because it is a good starting point for next year [and] all of our team members are returning next year, so I think we have a good shot at winning state next year,” Schulte said. “For next year, we plan to do more research on the identification characteristics of the bugs because we had the most trouble with identifying the different types of bugs.”

Junior Jeffery Morphis has been a member of FFA since eighth grade and joined after hearing about the program from his friend. Morphis said that he was happy after discovering that he was going to State with the entomology team, especially since it was his first year qualifying.

“I was super excited,” Morphis said. “This was the first time I’d qualified for a state contest, and the first time an entomology team from Cedar Park has qualified.”

Similar to the entomology members, the floral team qualified for state after weeks of preparing. Freshman Callie Hobbs, who has been a part of FFA for three years, said that when she heard her team had advanced, she was very proud.

“I was ecstatic when I found out we were going to State,” Hobbs said. “I was so proud of my teammates because we worked really hard and it paid off. I hadn’t been on the team very long when we went to our area competition, so I wasn’t expecting to do very well. However, when our scores were released, I was shocked at how well I did compared to how I thought I was going to do.”  

The FFA state competition took place in Huntsville, TX last Friday at Sam Houston University.

“I am very proud of how we did at state,” Hobbs said. “There were 60 floral teams in the whole state and we got 37th, so I was very excited with how we did. The state competition was the hardest competition that we had been to by far, so I am thrilled with our ranking.”

At first, sophomore Skye Lindholm said that she felt a bit discouraged after discovering her team only placed 37th, however, her opinion changed after realizing the level of competition.

“Well, personally, I felt a little disappointed,” Lindholm said. “I had wanted to do a little better, but I didn’t know how many teams there were. 37 out of 60 is pretty good.”

For next year, both Lindholm and Hobbs said that they plan on dedicating more time to studying and preparing for State to advance even further.

“I’m hoping that my team next year will win State so we can represent Texas at Nationals,” Lindholm said. “I plan on preparing by starting everything a lot earlier and going to more practice competitions.”