By: Abigail Gindlesberger

With sweaty palms and stomachs in knots, three Flora High School Section 23 FFA members, Collin Moseley, Bristol McAllister, and Jennifer Fulk, competed in the FFA Agriculture Legislative Day Public Speaking Contest on March 19, 2019.

Flora FFA president Mckenzie Wheeler explained, “The FFA Public Speaking contest consists of students from our Section 23 FFA signing up to compete in public speaking events in front of judges. They also hold a Section quiz bowl that night where schools from Section 23 compete against each other in Agriculture Trivia questions.”

Though it is a contest, any Section 23 member can compete; all they have to do is sign up and show up.

Once entered in the competition, contestants choose from three different categories. The first is Extemporaneous, where the candidates pick a topic out of a bucket and have 30 minutes to write notes on the topic before presenting at least a 4-minute speech about it. The judges then have the opportunity to ask questions. Another is Prepared, where the speech is already written and submitted before the competition. The judges of this section will review the speech before it is presented, and they can ask questions. Finally, the FFA Creed speaking contest, which is only for green hand members (First-year FFA members), where the competitors have to memorize and recite the whole creed in front of the judges. The judges have the chance to ask questions about the creed at the end of the presentation.

Though Wheeler opted to not participate in this year’s competition, she enjoyed helping the contest run smoothly and ensuring those competing were where they needed to be.

There were three FFA members from Flora who competed. Collin Moseley received third place in Varsity Extemporaneous, Bristol McAllister participated in JV Prepared placing third, and Jennifer Fulk competed in the Creed Speaking Contest, placing 12th out of 14.