The Newman Grove FFA Chapter ended their exciting year with the Annual FFA banquet. Held on Thursday April 28th, this year’s banquet was full of awards, excitement, and the nervousness of wondering who was going to buy you at the work auction. We began this year’s banquet with our Opening Ceremonies done by last year’s officer team which consisted of Mark O’Brien, Alisha Dunlap, Kendra Nelson, Ben Jacobson, Chelsea Benson, Scott Boettcher, Sheldon Boschen, Jason Kaufman, and Cristina King, followed by our prayer and potluck.

When everyone was done eating we went on to welcome our guest speaker Maile Ilac Boeder. Being from Murdock, Minnesota, Maile shared with us the stories of her past, giving us a very inspirational speech on the hardships of living on a dairy farm. After her fun stories of her brother trying to be superman, and her youngest brother calling to ask how to ask a girl out, we proceeded on with the awards.

First with Discovery Degrees being awarded to the following students for their hard work as a junior high FFA member: Andrea Adams, Esmeralda Arreguin, Kleo Edgell, Destiny Johnson, Andy King, Joe O’Brien, Crystal Salinas, and Nolan Wondercheck. Next with our Greenhand ceremony honoring those first or second year FFA members that strive to build their FFA experience up with a Supervised Agricultural Experience, those recipients’ were: Demi Edgell, Jacob Haase, Megan Nelson, John O’Brien, William O’Brien, Brooke Pieke, Sage Robak, and Alex Wiese.

Star Greenhand was awarded to William O’Brien for the most thought out SAE program. After receiving your Greenhand the next degree you can get is your chapter, and this year we had four applicants for chapter degree and they were: Brock Donelson, A.J. Boettcher, Ben Jacobson, and Jason Kaufman, star chapter was also awarded to Jason Kaufman. After your Chapter degree you can go for your state, an honor that is recognized at Nebraska State convention, and the only one from Newman Grove this year, Katie O’Brien.

Certificates of Merit were then handed out to members that attended events, competitions, and conferences. The Monsanto DeKalb award was given to Mark O’Brien, for being this year’s most active senior in our chapter. Then went on to fruit sales with Alex Wiese selling over $750 in fruit this year, followed by team sales of Joan and John O’Brien at $430.

After our fine awards were handed out it was time for the year in review, a slideshow created to let the parents, and other people at the banquet know what we have been doing over this past year in FFA. Then we went on to the Appreciation awards followed by our outstanding member award given to Brock Donelson.

We then had the retiring of our officer team and the installation of our new officers. Drum roll please, this year’s 2011- 2012 new chapter officer team is: Alisha Dunlap as Student council rep, Megan Nelson as student advisor, Brock Donelson as chaplain, Billy O’Brien as sentinel, John O’Brien as parliamentarian, Joan O’Brien as historian, Brooke Pieke as reporter, Jason Kaufman as treasurer, Demi Edgell as Secretary, Cristina King as vice president, and our new chapter president, Kendra Nelson.

Closing ceremonies were done by the new officer team and the night concluded with the annual Work Auction.