BY KRISTI HINE AND RILEY RODUNER
While many people appreciate the talent it takes to create a beautiful floriculture design, few are aware of the nitty-gritty details and knowledge it takes to win the FFA floriculture competition at the state level and advance to the national competition. This year, the Wessington Springs High School (WSHS) team comprised of seniors, Alyssa Grohs and Carissa Scheel, junior, Mariah Messmer, sophomore, Mercedes Jones and freshman, Anna Arhart were able to do just that.
When asked to describe how to define floriculture competition, the WSHS teammates were precise.
“The competition is based on the fundamentals of horticulture, including a 50 question general knowledge test over all things floriculture. Then there is a math test that gives real world scenarios that someone in the field would perform,” shared Jones.
Grohs echoed Jones when it comes to the financial record and also said she enjoys design.
“My favorite is the design portionof thecontest.Sometimes they give you a price range that your design has to fall within and sometimes they give you a copycat design that you have to recreate using the flowers they provide. With the arrangement, we also have to create a bill for it and record everything we used. That can really mess with you if you get it wrong,” added Grohs.
Scheel said she likes the creative aspect of design and also recognizes that when it comes to floriculture, the goods needed to practice can get expensive and help is always welcome.
“My favorite part is also the design portion of the contest. It’s really fun to get to show our own creative personalities,” Scheel said. “We also have to thank Coborn’s of Huron for donating flowers for practice. We also have to thank our advisor Mr. Brady Duxbury for taking the time to help us figure out and learn the math portion of the contest.”
In addition to design and math, the identification portion of the contest weighs heavily.
“I really enjoy the identification portion of the contest. We are given a list of 100 flowers and 30 tools to memorize and at the competitions they choose 50 from the two lists and we have to know what they are,” continued Jones.
With the varied ages and experience of the team members, their knowledge and understanding of the competition didn’t begin on a level playing field. However, Grohs said that once things started clicking, she could see a budding future.
“Mariah and I have been doing this for three years, Mercedes two years, and Anna and Carissa just started this year. When I looked at who was on our team, I knew we had a lot of potential, Grohs pointed out.
When asked to what they credit their success, Messmer was quick to jump in.
Mr. Duxbury and Katie Jones took time to look at stats from the past eight years and saw that we were strong in design but needed help in other areas,” Messmer explained.
And that, the students said, is where the real work began to create the well-rounded dream team that ended up earning them a trip to nationals.
“In this competition, you have to be good in all four areas, not just one. There were many late nights studying, sometimes we were up until 2 a.m. We really had to focus on our weak areas so we practiced a couple mornings each week. Katie (Jones) would look up questions and create study guides for the questions we commonly missed,” added Arhart.
Scheel explained that Jones and Duxbury would also give teams general knowledge questions and create mini competitions among the team to see who could score highest.
'I have to give Katie credit for helping us get where we are with our general knowledge questions. She really pushed us in that area. I also have to give credit to Laura Baker for our design work. She has helped us perfect our designs over the years. There really is a lot more work that goes into being good at all of these contests than you see from the outside,” Grohs expressed.
At the South Dakota State FFA Convention, the floriculture team competed Thursday, April 25 and had to wait for over 24 hours to find out the results of the competition Saturday morning. During awards, the top 10 placing individuals are called up onto the stage in no particular order and the placings are announced beginning at 10th.
“I just continued scooting down as people around me had their names called. You don’t know if you placed 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. I was so nervous and then shocked when my name was called for 1st place individual. I was already crying about placing 1st as an individual and then when we placed 1st as a team, I couldn’t stop. It was really emotional,” recalled Arhart.
As the sense of pride and accomplishment continues to fuel the team, they are quick to point out that they still have much work to do before the national convention, scheduled for October in Indianapolis.
“The national competition has 10 parts to it so we have a lot of learning to do. We will use our planting fundraiser (SEE AD ON PAGE FOUR) to practice and perfect our skills,” Scheel said.
No strangers to putting in the work, the team is energized to continue to study and practice well into the summer.
“We will definitely do more studying this summer and during the next school year,” says Grohs. “Carissa and I will be in college so getting together and studying will be a bit challenging but we will just have to use technology and make it work.”
After hearing their name called as the state winning floriculture team, a sense of pride was shared amongst the team: “It was pretty exciting to do as well as we did. I am proud of every single one of you guys,” Messmer said while looking at her teammates.
“It was a great feeling. At that moment I was proud of all of us as a team. It’s true what they say, hard work really does pay off. We put in a lot of hours to get where we did,” added Grohs.
“I was really excited. It showed how much work we put in to get here. We were a top team and we deserved it,” reflected Jones.
