By Ava Skinner
Winters FFA President
On Wednesday, Feb. 8, members of the Winters FFA Chapter traveled to River City High School in West Sacramento to compete at the Sectional Public Speaking competition. Winters FFA competed against different schools in their section including Davis, Delta, Esparto, Woodland, Woodland Pioneer and Woodland Christian.
The Creed Speaking competition is a freshman-level competition in which members recite and answer questions about the FFA Creed, which is an outline of the FFA organization’s beliefs about agriculture. Carlos Ramirez placed second, Jackson Bronson placed third and Izabelle Guzman placed fifth.
A new competition this year is the Spanish Creed Speaking Contest, in which contestants recite the Creed in Spanish and answer questions in Spanish. In the upperclassmen division, Guadalupe Lopez placed first and in the underclassmen division, Melissa Barrera placed second.
For the sophomore-level Impromptu Competition, contestants are given keywords and quotes pertaining to agriculture and are given one minute to prepare a 30-second to 2-minute speech on their topic. Eden Miller took home first place and Riley Hurst placed third.
Upperclassmen have the choice to compete in “Job Interview” or “Extemporaneous” competitions.
Job Interview contestants prepare a cover letter and resume, and compete against each other to demonstrate the best employment skills for a job in the agriculture industry. Allison Aguiar placed first and Lauren Back placed fifth.
For Extemporaneous, contestants have 30 minutes to use resources they bring to the competition to prepare a four to six-minute speech on a topic of agriculture and answer five minutes’ worth of questions. Mikenzie Hapworth-Eldridge placed second.
Everyone placing in the top three for their competition will move on to the Regionals Competition on March 10 held at Modesto Junior College.
Winters FFA represented Winters well and eight of the 13 students who competed at Sections are moving on to Regionals. The Winters FFA is very proud of the students who challenged themselves by competing in this competition.
