WH earns sweepstakes at Smith County Show

Kathryn Bond and Ramey Tucker

Eighteen members of the Whitehouse FFA show team competed recently at the Smith County Junior Livestock show, which was held at the fair grounds in North Tyler.

The students had a wide range of entries including ag mechanics projects, horticulture projects and animal projects.

The team did exceptionally well, winning the sweepstakes awards by earning more points than any other district that was represented at the show, according to FFA sponsor Casi Bynum.

Whitehouse took home two Grand Champion ribbons, two Best in Class ribbons and three Reserve Champion ribbons out of the four categories they had projects in.

This was the inaugural year of the horticulture portion of the show. Kathryn Bond won two flats of vegetables; tomatos and peppers. William Seal won Best in Class for his ornamental cactus, which also took home the ribbon for Reserve Champion of the horticulture projects.

Other students that participated in the horticulture competition were Cameron Rogers, Morgan Posey, Sarah Kuykendall, Cody Clark, Danny Freeman and Patrick Barnett.

Patrick Barnett

The show team had a total of seven projects in the shop category. These included a collapsible wooden lounge chair shown by Brandon Marble, a customdesigned doghouse by Brandon Hopson, a skinning rack exhibited by Allen Stone, a cedar porch swing built by Lance Collins, a shop table constructed by Jessica Huff, a 32' gooseneck trailer, and a restored 1949 Farmall tractor.

The trailer built and shown by Kyle Casey and Ben Edwards received the Reserve Grand Champion ribbon, and Dakota Nelson's restored tractor received the Grand Champion ribbon in the shop class. The rest of the projects also did well, each earning a blue ribbon.

Two students, Travis Baggett and Nick Glen, participated in the rabbit show. Each of these young men were awarded red ribbons for their entries.

The other animal category that Whitehouse participated in was the poultry broiler show. Broilers are chickens that are about six to seven weeks old and raised for meat. There were a total of five students from Whitehouse that participated in the show: Traci Martin, Jessica Huff, Kyle Casey, Dakota Nelson, and Ramey Tucker. The five students placed first through fifth in the contest. Nelson's poultry won Reserve Grand Champion and Tucker's broilers won Grand Champion.

Danny Freeman

The sale of champions was held on Saturday the 29. This sale consists of the superior projects that were entered into the show, as decided on by the judges. Each project was put up for auction and the student received the winning bid.

The students that were eligible for auction and the amount they received is as follows: Tucker, broilers, $650; Nelson, broilers, $550; Cameron Rogers, horticulture, $175; Martin, broilers, $400; Cody Clark, horticulture, $100; Huff, broilers, $325; Hopson, shop project, $250; Seal, horticulture $150; Bond, horticulture, $50; Seal, horticulture, $60; Barnett, horticulture, $55; Kukyendall, horticulture, $50; Freeman, horticulture, $50; Clark, horticulture, $50; Morgan Posey, horticulture, $35; Kukyendall, horticulture, $65; and Posey, horticulture, $60.

Dakota Nelson

The Whitehouse show team would like to recognize several key supporters and send out a special thank you to them for their contributions. They include but are not limited to: Estes, McClure and Associates, Senter Feed, Whitehouse Garage, Stainback Tire, East Texas Copy Systems, Cannon Steel, Edwin and Joann Northcutt, Reynolds and Kay, Steele's Feed, Apache Glass and Mirror, B&D electrical contractors, Pete Reese, Bens Plumbing, Computers and Cables of Texas, Medicine Shoppe, Mobile Communications Services and Garry Wimberly.

Traci Martin William Seal Morgan Posey Cameron Rogers Jessica Huff