Granton FFA Earns Gold Rating,
Other Awards at
Wisconsin FFA Convention

For many years, the FFA program has been an important part of the student experience at the Granton Middle/High School, and that was evident at the Wisconsin FFA Convention earlier this month as the Granton FFA chapter accumulated several awards.

“We had a lot of success. For our size, we were one of the most highlighted chapters,” Granton FFA advisor Katie Reider told the school board in a presentation at the board’s July meeting.

The 92nd Wisconsin FFA Convention took place July 6-8 at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison. Granton’s awards and activities included the following.

Chapter Awards

The Granton FFA was the state winner of the “Largest Percent FFA Membership to School Population” award, with 81 percent of students in grades 7-12 being in FFA.

The Granton FFA chapter was also selected as the Section 7 chapter represented in the Hall of Stars. Wisconsin is divided into 10 sections for FFA, with Section 7 including seven counties in north-central Wisconsin, namely Clark, Wood, Portage, Marathon, Taylor, Lincoln and Price.

“Our chapter provided a resume highlighting popular activities our chapter conducts throughout the year to provide other chapters with ideas for new events. We also had a booth on display with pictures of these events,” Reider wrote in a press release after the convention.

Granton FFA’s Food for America program ranked sixth in the state. Activities that the chapter does as part of this program include a farm tour for grades four and five, making ice cream with the fourth grade, the annual Thanksgiving Skit and Feast, and “Ag in the Classroom” lessons taught throughout the school year to grades kindergarten through five.

The Granton FFA was also recognized as a gold-rated chapter. In April, the Granton FFA submitted its National
Chapter Award application, which is based on the program of activities from the past year.

“This application is pretty extensive and outlines goals for each event, learning outcomes and an explanation of how it relates to one of the quality standards for an activity,” Reider wrote.

The chapter officers completed the application, which was submitted and rated. Gold-rated chapters have their applications advance to nationals where they are ranked on a different system.

The Granton FFA chapter once again received a gold rating and will advance to nationals. A new accomplishment for the chapter was it ranked in the top 10 for each of the three areas of the National Chapter Award application this year, among the other Wisconsin chapters.

Granton took ninth place in growing leaders, for activities like its etiquette dinner. The Granton FFA chapter also took ninth place in building communities, for activities like the Christmas Angel project and making hats for people in need. Finally, Granton took seventh place in strengthening agriculture. That part of the application focused on activities like the chapter’s bike safety rodeo and Thanksgiving skit.

The Granton FFA was also the eighth-place chapter overall for the national Chapter Award contest.

Individual/small group awards

State FFA Degrees were awarded to the 2021 and 2020 recipients, since the 2020 recipients never got the chance to walk the stage and receive their award last year. The State FFA Degree is the highest honor a member can earn at the state level. Rhiannon Reimer and Hannah Walter were the 2020 recipients. Makenzie Muraski, Ashlee Piskow and Kristin Strey were the 2021 recipients.

Additionally, Strey was named a Three Star Leader “for her exemplary leadership in the chapter as 2020-21-chapter president,” Reider wrote.

Three Star Leaders ae recognized for their involvement in chapter activities in the following three areas: growing leaders, building communities and strengthening agriculture.

The middle school quiz bowl team was state runner-up. Participants were Joran Berg, Emma Brookhart and Tori Seif.

“I’ve never had a team place that high. It was exciting for them,” said Reider

A couple FFA members earned proficiency awards. Abby Woller took fourth place in fruit production. Reimer took first place in vegetable production. Her application will advance to nationals, and she will find out the results in August.

“The unique thing about Rhiannon’s DAE (supervised agricultural experience) is that she has won the state contest in two other proficiency categories: diversified crop production – entrepreneurship in 2020 and fruit production in 2019,” Reider wrote.

Berg was recognized before the convention for earning a silver placing in the AgriScience Fair based on a 12-week research experiment she conducted using the school greenhouse to compare the effects of different fertilizer sources on plant growth.

Also, the parliamentary procedure team competed. Participants were Alexis Pongratz, Reimer, Lizzy Reinart, Abby Schoessow, Caleb Schoessow and Woller.

Granton Area School Board members appreciated Rieder’s report and said they were proud of all the FFA members’ accomplishments.

“It’s important to toot their horn because they really did an awesome job,” said board member Cheryl Steinbach.

Editor Valorie Brecht contributed to this report.

 

Clark County Press, Neillsville, WI

July 28, 2021

Transcribed by Dolores M. Kenyon, August 27, 2021.

Web page by James W. Sternitzky PhD, August 29, 2021. 

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