For the first time in Rusty Yeomans’ tenure as Goshen High School’s Future Farmer’s of America sponsor, he is taking a livestock judging team to compete at the state level.

“We have won awards at the county and district levels, but the state level is new for us,” Yeomans said. “I hope we can win it this year, but if we don’t it is still nice to be able to make it this far.”

Four GHS students will take part in the state FFA Livestock Judging Competition June 2 at Auburn University.

“This is the first time since I’ve been here that we have made it this far,” Yeomans said.

“We’ve always placed at district, but not high enough to make it to the competition.”

Only the top four teams at district level advance to the state competition.

This year GHS senior Audie Davis, senior Leana Vinson, sophomore Levi Davis and sophomore Clay Powell won third place at the district level.

The four scored 528 out 600 to land themselves a spot in the state competition but should be no surprise since Yeomans said the team has practiced at least twice per week in class, plus the members also took home videos to learn from them.

“Since school is out now, we are going to try to meet a couple of evenings before we leave for competition,” Yeomans said.

According to Yeomans the competition includes a written knowledge test, visually placing the animals and giving oral reasons on certain classes.

“The classes consist of market cattle, breeding cattle, market swine, breeding swine, market sheep and breeding sheep,” Yeomans said.

“The students will then judge quality and yield grade on the market cattle class.”

The competition will also give the first time the competitors a chance to judge a class of goats, but will not be used to determine the winner of the competition.

“We hope to at least place in this competition,” Yeomans said. “We were third behind No.1 Rehobeth, No.2 South Dale and New Brockton was No. 4.”