Area FFA programs yield state champs

By Deb Gau
Winning is exciting, but area champions from the 2008 FFA state convention say the work they put into their projects makes it mean even more.

Two area students, Misti Nelson of Canby High School and Kyle O’Toole of Russell-Tyler-Ruthton High School, are among those headed for FFA national competitions this fall. Nelson placed first in state in the new entrepreneurial category and O’Toole came in first for prepared public speaking.

O’Toole was named one of the top speakers in the state for his prepared informative speech on alternative fuels.

The aim of the prepared speech category was to research and write a speech on an agricultural topic and demonstrate your knowledge of the topic, O’Toole said.

Nelson said she had no idea what to expect when she entered her horse breeding and training program into the entrepreneurial category.

“It’s kind of a new thing for FFA,” she said.

So new, in fact, that she didn’t have any examples from previous years to go by. “I kinda just winged it.”

Nelson had to fill out an application to enter the category. She had only a set amount of space to answer the application’s questions, but students were allowed to include photos, a business plan and other portfolio materials to enhance the application.

“They pretty much asked all business questions, like what kind of product are you going to offer?” Nelson said. “There were probably 50 pages of questions that I had to answer.”

O’Toole said another extracurricular he is involved with helped with the FFA competition.

O’Toole is also a member of the RTR speech team, so he had an outlet to help develop his speech.

But there is always an element of surprise - after speaking, he had to answer additional questions from judges.

“I’m always kind of nervous, but it’s not that bad, since I’ve been in speech since sixth grade,” he said.

“I feel pretty good. I worked hard for it, researching and practicing the speech,” O’Toole said of winning the state competition.

Being named the state winner, Nelson said, was both exciting personally, and extra publicity for her business.

“It made me excited that more people knew about it,” Nelson said. “I picked up a couple of new horses for training.”

Nelson said she was thankful to her parents and grandparents, who provided space and extra help for the business.

“They’re part of the reason I got so far,” Nelson said.

Now that nationals is on the horizon, O’Toole said, “I’m definitely going to have to fine-tune the speech. I like to sit down at night and look on the computer for new information, go over the speech a few times to help me remember it.”