Friday morning there were a lot of FFA members in official dress (blue jackets) for the Region 8 Winter Leadership Day held at the Riverland Community college in Austin. There were no regular classes at Riverland Friday so it was a great location to host the Leadership Day! For many years I have helped judge the FFA Creed Contest. In addition to the contest I was helping with there were a number of other activities at Riverland.

There was the Best informed Greenhand Contest, Employment Skills, Entrepreneurial Proficiency Interviews, Extemporaneous Speaking Contest, Discussion Meet, and Prepared Public Speaking. In addition there were Region Officer Interviews and State Degree Interviews. There was a lot of time involved in getting all these events set up not to mention judges too!

The Creed Contest that I was helping with is for FFA Greenhands, so they were in 7th, 8th or 9th grade. All of the contestants in the FFA Creed Contest were well prepared. They could recite the FFA Creed. However, you could tell some were very tense or nervous. This may have been the first time in their lives doing any type of public speaking. Others you could tell had done it many times and were very comfortable.

I was thinking about which FFA members benefited the most from the contest Friday. Maybe it was the ones that did not win, the ones that were the most nervous? But they got up there in front of the judges and did it. Maybe FFA activities like this will benefit these members grow and mature the most?

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