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South Putnam FFA wins state, prepares for nationals
The South Putnam FFA novice parliamentary procedure team -- consisting of Drew Steffy, Alex and Evan Steffy, Ava McHugh, Dartagnan Neudeck, Brooke Roberts and Bree Mahoney-Sutherland -- has placed first in the recent state chapter meeting and qualified to compete in the 90th National FFA Convention and Expo.
“It feels unreal to win state,” Evan Steffy said. “Coming in first just feels like the ultimate thing.”
Most novice teams are larger and composed of freshmen, but the small team of eighth-graders practiced every Monday and Tuesday from 7 to 8 a.m. since September to prepare for the state competition.
“I dreaded every practice just because it was early,” Alex Steffy said. “And when we got to the state contest I said we should just turn around now.”
But her sister, Drew Steffy, added, “It feels good because we’ve put a lot of work in this. I guess it’s worth it now since we’re going to nationals.”
It is the first time the novice team has made it to nationals, and the victory comes on the heels of the senior team doing the same last year, where it took 17th out of 45 schools.
“There’s something in the water,” Mahoney-Suthlerand joked.
This year’s national competition will be Oct. 25-28 in Indianapolis. For now the team plans to take a break for 4-H and the fair, but in August it’ll be back to work as usual.
The team will be required to answer written and verbal questions, and each team member must debate at least three times. It will also receive a bank of possible motions, but won’t know which of these the judges will choose.
The good news, the team said, is that nationals is easier than state.
For doing so well, the team had a rather rough start, with adviser Amanda King having to draft some members to get a full team together.
“I didn’t even know what I was doing until King pushed me into it,” McHugh recalled. “None of my family members were in FFA.”
Neudeck added, “I got guilted into it, and that’s how it all started. I love parli. It’s so fun, being with all of you is so fun.”
Learning to get along as a team is also part of doing well in parliamentary procedure, but that’s not something this team has struggled with.
“If you haven’t caught on, they’ve pretty much become a bunch of siblings that I have to babysit all the time,” adviser King said during a particularly rowdy moment of the interview. Ironically, three of the seven members are triplets.
When asked how they’ll use this experience later in life, the students said that learning to communicate and to depend on others will be helpful in their careers and personal lives. But right now the focus is on climbing to the top.
“I’m pretty excited for nationals because we’re a small school compared to some of the schools we competed against,” Drew Steffy said. “We’re putting in all this work and I don’t want to do anything but win. That would be the first time we’ve ever won nationals. I don’t want top three. I want to win.”