Informative Essay On Livestock Judging

“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” These wise words from Vince Lombardi is what motivates me when I judge a class. Livestock judging is something that is sometimes overlooked. You have a limited time to make a critical decision while being confident enough to answer questions about your decision.
I first started judging my freshmen year, I was asked by my ag teacher if I wanted to do livestock judging and he told me that he thought I would be good at it. I remember my very first contest I was lost, there were approximately three hundred people and I had never been in this type of contest before. I was nervous my hands were shaking like a timber rattler, right before the contest started I got even more nervous I was so scared I was going to mess something up. It went by fast and I

really didn’t do that bad for my first time.

I knew that after that contest that I really liked it and would love to do it in my future. Two weeks later we had our area contest and I was the second highest on my team my score improved a great amount. We didn’t advance to state which wasn’t a shocker because my teammates really didn’t care about it. The next year when the time came around my ag teacher said he was to busy to coach us and we wouldn’t have a livestock judging team and that he was going to move me to the horse judging team. I acted fine and front of him but deep down I was sick I was really looking forward to judging again. About a week later he told me that one of the girls that was on my team last year that her dad was going to coach us and take us to our competitions. We went to several more competitions than we did my freshmen year. We attended several major competitions such as: San Antonio, Houston, Tarleton State, SFA, and our Area 9 competition. My

teammates changed a little bit but not much and I had a pretty successful year but we still didn’t make it to state. Going into my junior year I started taking this extremely serious. My team changed a whole lot and it was great. We all really care and take judging serious and I learned more in 1 month than I did my whole sophomore and freshmen years.
We competed in fewer competitions but we study and looked at classes at least everyday. We placed fourth at our area competition and advanced to state. This was our goal from day one and it felt great to reach it. After the state contest I knew that this was exactly what I wanted to do in college. My team and I attended a camp at Texas A&M this past summer. This helped me a lot on every aspects of judging. Just last week we competed at State Fair and as a team we placed 27 out of 175. I placed 58 out of 556 individuals. This was a huge step for us as a team to place this high in the first competiton of the year.
In conclusion, livestock judging is how I am defined. I advise everyone to try something new you never know how it might affect you. It could be a huge part of your life and direct you in the future like FFA and Livestock Judging has done for me.