Santa Maria High School FFA dairy team members are now national champions, marking a first time since the start of the school’s FFA Chapter in 1931.
The team earned the first place honor after competing against state champions from 39 other states during the two-day national contest at the FFA National Convention in Louisville, Ky., recently.
The team consisted of juniors Mariana De Leon and Valentina Santos, and seniors Alondra Novoa and Daisy Bernal.
The first day was the team competition where the girls had to perform a series of lab tests such as aerobic plate count, somatic cell count, and titratable acidity. In addition, the girls also had to interpret data from tests that were conducted by a professional lab. Finally, the girls needed to deliver a 10-minute presentation on their findings and interpretation of the data and deem the results as compliant or non-compliant with current USDA industry standards.
The team not only won this portion of the contest but also made a huge impression on the professors from various major universities who were judging the event. Several judges commented during the awards ceremony that this was not only the best team presentation they have seen or heard, but also one of the most passionate, sincere, and professional teams they have judged, according to the team’s coach Mark Powell.
The following day’s competition included the tasting portion of the contest as well as another lab procedure that they must perform. Finally the girls had to take three exams, which included marketing questions, dairy production questions, and the very challenging problem-solving exam. The problem-solving exam required the team to evaluate marketing figures such as per capita numbers and calculate market performances and outlooks. Essentially, it’s a very complex mathematical word problem exam. De Leon was the only student to get every calculation correct and ultimately was the highest scoring individual in that area of the contest, Powell added.
“The girls worked very hard to earn this national title devoting anywhere from 40 to 50 hours a week for the past few months,” Powell said. “In addition to that translating into the national title, the girls also had personal achievements. Alondra was third in the nation followed by Mariana who achieved fourth. Daisy achieved seventh place and Valentina was 15th.”
This article appears in Nov 12-19, 2015.