Governor Christie Whitman and New Jersey Agriculture Secretary Art Brown,
Jr., today congratulated Woodstown FFA's four-person
team for capturing top honors in the Dairy Cattle
Evaluation Career Development Event at the National
FFA Convention in Kansas City, MO, last week. This
is the first time New Jersey FFA's 70-year history
that a Garden State team has won a national career
development event at the annual convention. The
winning team members are Skippy Coles, Courtney
Harris and Todd Eachus, all of Pilesgrove
and Tim Coleman of Elmer. Team coaches are Cheryl
Lowe and Chris Tice. Because of their
individual scores on the team, Coles, Coleman and Eachus will
also receive special scholarship awards from the
event sponsors, Associated Milk Producers, Inc.,
of New Ulm, MN, and Babson Brothers/SURGE of Naperville,
IL. "This award demonstrates how strong agriculture
education is in the Garden State and how it helps
students meet the core curriculum content standards
we've established for our high school students," Governor
Whitman said. "It's also a tribute to the dedication
of the Woodstown team, their coaches and their
community. It's a win that the State FFA organization
and agriculture educators around the state can
all be proud of." "These young people are to be
congratulated on this outstanding achievement," Brown
said. "This is one of the most difficult career
development events offered at the national convention
and they outperformed competition from 44 other
states, including the top five milk-producing states
in the nation." The Dairy Cattle Evaluation Event
tests students' ability to select and manage high-quality
dairy animals, using live animals, herd management
records and written criteria concerning cattle
traits.
The
Woodstown FFA Chapter is one of 36 chapters in
New Jersey. The State FFA Organization now boasts
1,800 members as part of the 449,500 members
in 7200 chapters across the nation. |
