The Montgomery County FFA agricultural issues team had reason to celebrate after competing in the Missouri Northeast District Leadership Development Events contest on March 23 at Monroe City High School.
The all-junior squad qualified for state competition after placing fourth in the district event. It will participate in the state contest on April 15 at the Missouri FFA Convention in Columbia.

At districts, the team of Lily Hillebrand, Lafe McCurdy, Ann Rose, Olivia Spurgeon, Jillian Weekley and Alaina Zerr made a presentation of the data center and the agricultural and environmental impacts it could bring to Montgomery County. It finished behind district champion Silex, second-place Centralia and third-place Milan. Centralia also did a data center presentation, but it focused more on how the data center would affect statewide.

For the last several months, the team made presentations at the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City, the Missouri Department of Conservation, a Rotary Club meeting, a Montgomery County Commissioner meeting and a Montgomery County R-II School Board meeting. It also showed its presentation to the Preserve Montgomery County group.

The team qualified for districts by placing second to Silex at Area V competition on March 18 at Van-Far High School. By placing fourth in districts, MCHS will join Silex, Centralia, Milan and Troy at the state contest in Columbia.

“It’s definitely an accomplishment,” McCurdy said. “We worked so hard. We put in all of the time by going to the after-school stuff like going to the school board meetings and the capitol. Speaking in front of those people was definitely hard for some of us who haven’t had any public speaking.”

Each of the members on the team played a role in the data center presentation. Hillebrand was the utility specialist, Weekley played the school superintendent, McCurdy was the county commissioner, Spurgeon played the concerned resident, Rose was the environmentalist and Zerr was the farmer.

McCurdy said he learned about the county commissioner’s role by interviewing the Montgomery County Commission.

“It’s definitely good to talk to them and learn a lot of stuff that isn’t really talked about,” McCurdy said. “A lot of it, nobody gives the facts and figures. They’re all rumors. I learned a lot. I’m looking at it more and more through talking to them.”

Weekley said when she was selected to be the school superintendent, she got to talk with R-II Superintendent Dr. Brian White.

“We were talking about what roles we wanted in the skit overall,” Weekley said. “We kind of volunteered about who we wanted to interview, so I thought it would be fun to interview Dr. White.”

Spurgeon said her role was to bring up questions that community members had about data centers.
“Everytime we would switch topics, I would be the person being like, ‘What about the water being used or how much land is there?’” she said.

The team had a 15-minute limit in its presentation and got a seven-minute question session. Hillebrand said she was happy her team finished in the top five at districts.

“I think we could definitely improve on those hard questions that we got,” she said. “But overall, we did really good in our presentation.”

MCHS FFA co-adviser Amanda Sullivan said when the team made its presentation to the Missouri Department of Conservation, Rose gathered plenty of information on conservation and environmentalism by asking questions.

“The Missouri Department of Conservation doesn’t really have a stand on it, but it does have a policy person who directs people of information they can look into, so that was very helpful for Ann,” Sullivan said. “So she tries to talk about wildlife, the environment and noise pollution. I think she does a really good job.”
Silex won the district title for making its presentation on cattle missions.

“They’re a very hard team,” Zerr said. “They won nationals once, so they know what it takes to get to nationals and win. So we have some competition.”