A great idea and consistent excellence enabled the Girard High School FFA agricultural communications team to take first place in the National FFA Agricultural Communications Career Development Event, held during the 82nd National FFA Convention Oct. 21-24 in Indianapolis, Ind.
Team members are Tyler Egbert, Brock Burnick, Austin Price, Christina Biancarelli and Nolan O’Toole, all GHS seniors.
“Girard FFA has sent teams to national competition before, but this is the first time its won first place in any national event,” O’Toole said.
Egbert, Burnick, Price and Biancarelli have been a team for several years.
“We started out two or three years ago at the district level, and we did not win,” Burnick said. “Last April we competed at district and won, then we went to state and won that, too.”
There are five categories for national competition — graphic design, press release, news writing, broadcasting and web design. Biancarelli explained that competition categories vary from state to state.
“Kansas has four areas of competition, but didn’t have web design,” she said.
Her special area of competition was graphic design, while Price did broadcasting, Egbert did news writing and Burnick did press release. The team, headed to nationals after winning at the state level, needed somebody to compete in web design.
“That’s when we adopted Nolan,” Burnick said.
Working with the students to help them prepare for the national competition were Alan Boultinghouse, Girard FFA sponsor, teacher Joe Curran and student teacher Shawn Turner.
“The 30 teams competing against us had all won at their state, so we were competing against the best in the nation,” Burnick said.
“Our team stood out, because agricultural communications is typically girl-dominated,” Biancarelli said.
However, she’s the only girl on the Girard team.
“Out of the 150 people at the competition, there were only 18 boys, and we had four of them,” Egbert said.
For the competition, teams had to come up with a proposal for a project.
“The theme was community service, and some teams did proposals for a community carnival or Arbor Day events,” Biancarelli said. “We thought that, with the loss of the Girard Press, the community had lost a voice, so our proposal was to start a new newspaper.”
“A free newspaper was the best idea we could think of,” Egbert said.
Their newspaper was named Community Ties.
“We thought it could tie the community together, and it’s also a pun for railroad ties, because the railroad went through Girard,” Biancarelli said. “We’re planning on continuing the online newspaper.”
“We’ll update it weekly or monthly in our spare time,” Egbert said.
Of course, team members are busy seniors, and will be graduating in the spring, but O’Toole said that may not be the end of Community Ties.
“It may be a class next year,” he said.
The team didn’t make it into the top four and the finals.
“People thought we were done, but the next day we learned that we’d won,” Burnick said.
“The reason for that was because we all did well individually,” O’Toole said.
“There was only 15 points difference between our highest and lowest scores,” Egbert said.
Three team members placed in the top 10. Price placed second, Biancarelli was sixth and Burnick was 10th. All five earned gold emblems in individual competition. And, as members of the winning team, each will also receive a $1,000 scholarship to a post-secondary institution of his/her choice.
O’Toole plans to major in a computer-related field, while Biancarelli is interested in industrial design, with a focus on architecture.
“I’ll attend PSU the first year, then transfer to a larger university,” she said.
“My tentative plans are to be a pre-med major at either PSU or Kansas State University,” Egbert said.
“I plan to major in chemistry with a pre-med emphasis,” Price said. “But I may double major in Latin American studies, because I’ve always been interested in the Spanish-speaking countries.”
“I’m considering a double major at K-State,” Burnick said. “I’m thinking about agricultural economics, but I may get into agricultural communications later on.”
They all agreed that participating in the national competition was a great experience.
“We all want to thank the school staff and administration for helping us and allowing us to go to the convention,” Egbert said.
GIRARD —
