Luke O’Leary Elected President
SLOHS Alumni and Texas A&M University freshmen, Luke O’Leary, was elected as the President of the California FFA Association. He will take the next year off to serve the over 86,000 students enrolled in agriculture educations across the state. Luke and the rest of the team will travel to schools giving workshops, attend leadership conferences, meet with industry professionals and legislators, and put on the 2018 State Conference in Anaheim next year. It is a huge honor and achievement for a student to get elected to state office. We are very excited to watch Luke lead the state association next year!
Luke runs on stage in front of 7,500 students from across the state to meet his team.
Individual Public Speaking
In Fresno this past Thursday, SLOFFA had 6 members competing in 3 different Leadership Development Events (LDE). Greta Carlson, Minori Jaggia, and J’aime Radding competed in Prepared Public Speaking where each student recited their own 6-8 minute speech and responded to 5 minutes of open questions. Greta moved on to the final round and placed 1st in California. In October, Greta will travel to Indianapolis to compete at Nationals. Kalena Cirone competed in Extemporaneous Speaking where she choose an unknown agricultural topic and was required to write a 4-6 minute speech in 30 minutes, followed by open questions. Jade Norton and Elena Grant competed in the Creed Speaking contest which required them to recite the 5 paragraph FFA Creed and answer 3 open questions related to the creed.
State Prepared Speaking Champion Greta Carlson
State Semi-Finalists in Creed Speaking
Elena Grant and Jade Norton
Parliamentary Procedure Debate Teams
Both Novice and Advanced Parliamentary Procedure teams competed in State Finals this past weekend. The members of the novice team were: Addie New-Schmidt, Lauren Lafaille, Sydney Cusick, Jade Norton, Brooke Jacobs, Kathryn Zagrodny, and Catrina Sada. The advanced team members were: Maggie Vanscoy, Callan Treur, Hannah Ryan, Jamie Fritzley, Sophie Manio, J’aime Radding, Minori Jaggia, and Carolyn Adams. Each team had to complete a written test questioning their knowledge of parliamentary law. From there, both teams competed in the preliminary rounds, proceeded to semifinals, and then advanced to the final round with the top six teams in the state. The rounds each demonstrated proper parliamentary procedure and informative debates. After each round, every team member was asked an individual question and then the team answered two minutes of open questions. The advanced team placed 3rd in the state and Sophie Manio was awarded High Debater. The novice team won 1st place in the state. Sydney Cusick, Brooke Jacobs, and Kathryn Zagrodny all earned High Debaters in the state and Addie New-Schmidt won High Chairman. The novice team qualified for the national competition and will travel to Indiana in the fall to compete.
Agriscience Research Project Team
Many students competed in the Agriscience fair competition which took place on Sunday, April 23. Each student worked hard throughout the year researching and writing a report on their project along with a poster board. Hannah Ryan, Lili Steel, Lauren Erickson, Molly Massman and Megan Fragasso all entered their research projects as a team and were required to participate in a thirty minute interview. Overall, the Agriscience team placed 3rd in the state. The different projects were also entered individually and Hannah Ryan placed third in the advanced animal science division with her project, “A Study on the Tensile Strengths of Bovine Aortic and Pulmonic Heart Valve Leaflets”. Megan Fragasso and Molly Massman won 1st place in the advanced team environmental systems division with their project, “Wildfire Effects on Topsoil”. Ariana King and Lily Svetich won 1st in the Advanced Social Study division with their project, “A Study of a Vegetable Survey for Elementary School Students”. All Students who earned 1st place have qualified for nationals and will have their projects compete in the Agriscience fair in Indiana.
3rd in State Agriscience Research Team
Lili Steel, Molly Massman, Lauren Erickson, Hannah Schmidt, Megan Fragasso
State Talent
Sophomore, Ariana King, not only won her division for her agriscience research project, but performed an incredible state talent during the final session of the leadership conference. She sang “When we were Young” by Adele. Watch Ari’s performance here.
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