FFA Wildlife Teams Travel to Adairsville

The Heritage High School Wildlife teams traveled to Adairsville the week of January 14th to compete in the FFA Area Contest. The Junior Team placed 3rd out of 30 teams, and the Senior Team placed 5th out of 24 teams. The students representing our Heritage High School were Sammi Williamson, Joe Heimer, Brandon Heimer, Sawyer Olivarri, Owen Tollett, and Tyler Hamilton. Each student did an excellent job, and everyone placed in the top ten individually.

FFA has been practicing with their wildlife team for the past year now, and during that time they became quite skilled at identifying their assigned materials. Over the years Mrs. Handy, the Agriculture teacher, has accumulated quite the collection of study materials for wildlife. Some of the materials include skulls, pictures of plants, and laminated samples. All of which, each student stated, helped them greatly once the competition started. In the competition, students have to identify different types of fish, animals, skulls, and plants. Freshman Brandon Heimer stated, “Well, first I practiced with some samples and with the slideshows on the computer.” He later added, “I felt really confident after I walked out of there.” We also spoke with sophomore Owen Tollett, and he explained, “We had two months where every week or so we would meet up as a group. It was mostly the senior team kind of passing on what we learned the previous year.” Owen Tollett’s personal favorite part was the bus ride there. He said, “The ride up there was definitely fun. We really got to know the junior team as well as the senior team. We all kind of brought it together. It was a good time.”

This wasn’t the first FFA accomplishment of the year. Here’s some of what they’ve been up to this year: 

• Junior Morgan Haney competed in the State FFA Contest for Senior Floral Design on December 11th last year.
• The first ever Vet Science team, consisting of freshmen Georgia King, Kaylin Schubert, Kylie Campbell, and Madison Hall, placed 5th out of 20 teams in the Area 1 Contest on November 30.
• The week of November 17th, the Floriculture teams traveled to Calhoun to compete in the Area competition. The senior team placed 6th out of 27 teams, and the junior team placed 14th out of 35 teams. The Heritage junior team included Sammi Williamson, Kylie Campbell, and Georgia King. The senior team included Owen Tollett, Regan Simmons, Meredith Kennedy, and Mason Weaver.  Williamson (junior) and Tollett (senior) placed 4th and 9th, respectively.

As for future accomplishments, the greenhouse opens on April 15th and 16th, so come out and support our FFA students!