By Ansley Hollingsworth/FFA
Since August, a particular group of students from the Hollow Rock-Bruceton FFA Chapter have been hard at work with one thing on their minds: the 2024 High School Horse Judging Competition. This competition consisted of 4 classes of horses, with 4 horses in each group. The students’ goal was to judge which horse they thought were the best, and to eventually match the scores of the judges. Another challenge was 2 sets of verbal reasons that the students had to give to a series of judges on why they placed the horses in the preplaced spots. On September 9th,with high hopes the Hollow Rock-Bruceton FFA Horse Judging team attended a training clinic for the awaiting event.
There, the students learned how to judge the horses and what to expect. The clinic was held at the UT Martin Ag Pavilion with several schools visiting from all over West Tennessee. After training for nearly a month, the team’s scores proved to be impressive. A week later, the team took part in the official West Tennessee Horse Judging Competition, once again at Martin. The contest lasted from 3:30-8:00 at night, with 26 teams and 104 competitors. For hours, the HRB FFA team placed, judged, and described the horses in great detail.
Team member Ansley Hollingsworth had this to say about the experience, “Although it was stressful at times, we all enjoyed the contest and we felt like we belonged among the other schools. If we had the chance, we would all do it again.” As the students finished and the judges calculated the winners, the team (Allie Paschall, Ansley Hollingsworth, Makray Brown, and Kelcie Burlison) anxiously waited for the results. The group was also accompanied by Michael Stanford, the FFA Advisor and Agriculture teacher at Hollow Rock-Bruceton, and Amanda Paschall, a leader in the 4-H organization and Allie’s mother. Finally, the judges had the results. In the group, every member performed impressively and stunningly especially Allie Paschall, who earned 5th individually out of every other student. The team finished 13th in the region, and earned the title of District Champions.
The victory showed the team what FFA could do, and how it could brightly affect them. Now, the team plans to attend the state competition to add to their experience and accomplishments.