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SVRCS Forestry team places at Eastern Nationals; sophomore wins individual first place

LOGANTON -- This past weekend four students represented Sugar Valley Rural Charter School at the Eastern Nationals Future Farmers of America competition held in Massachusetts -- with one bringing home a school-first individual first place.

The Forestry team, consisting of sophomores Wyatt Conoway and Ben Parker, junior Thayne Jeffries and senior Dakota Holdren placed fifth out of around nine teams in the competition and have worked hard to make SVRCS proud.

The team made it to Eastern Nationals by placing third in their states competition -- with the team ahead of them having already gone to the national competition once.

"The second place team already went to the big E, so they couldn't go a second time. We went (instead.) States was very fun," said Conoway.

In some other states, teams are allowed to attend nationals more than once. But in Pennsylvania they can only attend once.

Their state competition held most of the same tests as nationals -- tree measurements, tree identification, disease identification and tools. They also had to do a speech on invasive insects that kill trees.

According to the team, the nationals competition weekend was a lot of fun as well and everyone enjoyed their time there.

"For the team competition, they had us go out into the woods and gather certain items. They had us take the area of a plot of land and do a basal area," said Jeffries, who explained the term 'basal area' as the amount of usable trees in an acre.

Advisors Chuck Bechdel, Robbie Weaver, Kim Bohartz and Jamie Fox were all pleased with how the students did.

"We're all happy with them. There's always things we'd like to see them do better but they worked hard. They fought their way through," said Bechdel.

Bechdel said that each level of competition gets more challenging as you move from area competitions, state competitions and national competitions. The students and advisors alike learn a lot and use the information to prepare for the next competition.

"These trips are also learning experiences for us," said Weaver, who described a portion of the competition where students had to figure out what to do with a penny.

"As soon as I saw (the penny) I knew what it was for, but these guys didn't right away. Now during my course that's something that I'll teach. It was a successful trip. The kids went up and did what they were supposed to do. I wish we would have placed higher as a team but having a top individual was great," said Weaver.

In the individual competition, Conoway placed first -- the first student at SVRCS to do so.

"We strive for the top here, and (the students) know it, too. We like to keep the kids involved," said Weaver.

Despite the fact that they strive for the top, the advisors and students know that you can't win every time.

"They always work hard. This will stay with them forever -- they'll get to say, 'I was in the fifth place team at Eastern Nationals' and 'I was the first to win Eastern Nationals with SVRCS.' It's amazing how many older kids come back and talk about how great it was on the trips," said Bechdel.

Check out the FFA's official Tiktok account @sugarvalleyffa to get updates and see the team in action!