When senior Ryan Prindle first decided to follow in his older brother’s footsteps as a freshman, he never predicted how far FFA would take him.

“He raised a pig,” Prindle said. “So I was all gung ho about raising a pig. Then I realized FFA was so much more than raising a pig.”

After serving as Chapter Officer for the past three years, being a national convention delegate, and serving as an Area officer this year, Prindle has experienced FFA outside of Cedar Park’s barn.

“There are 104,000 members in Texas FFA,” Prindle said. “And all those members are completely different. At all the different conventions you see all the different personalities work together to benefit the organization, which is really cool to me.”

And as a presidential candidate, Prindle has the opportunity to progress even further in FFA.

“I think that I have a very good shot,” Prindle said.

If Prindle is elected state president in July, he would spend the year traveling across the state with the state officer team visiting other chapters.

Regardless of whether he’s elected president, Prindle will be away from Cedar Park on state officer duties much of next year.

“I’m going to be on the outside looking in next year,” Prindle said. “That’s going to be really hard for me.”

Prindle hopes to carry on what he learned from the last four years of FFA to his new leadership role.

“I learned who I was as a person,” Prindle said. “And I learned all the things I can do that I never thought I could. As an 18 year old, I’m going to be running a multi-million dollar organization.”

His involvement with FFA is shaping his long term future plans as well. Though he deferred his acceptance to Oklahoma State for FFA duties, he plans to study to become a lobbyist for Agribusiness.