The following is a press Release for the Chelan High School Agriculture Education Department and the Chelan FFA. We would appreciate any and all coverage of our events and student successes. For more information, contact our Chapter Advisor, Rod Cool, or Chapter Reporter, Chelsea Gocke at (509) 682-4061 ext 129 during school hours.

Thank you for your time and consideration and for your continued support of the Chelan FFA and high school agriculture education.

Chelan High School

Agriculture Education Deparment/Chelan FFA

News Release

30 Apr 08

For Immediate Release – FFA teams from throughout Washington State gathered last Friday for the NCW Forestry Competition held at Squilchuck State Park. All together, over 120 students from seven high schools participated in ten different practicum areas to test their knowledge and skills of Forestry and Natural Resource Sciences. In the end, the Wenatchee FFA narrowly won the competition, followed closely by Mt. Baker FFA and Colville FFA, who placed second and third respectively. Other teams participating included Chelan, Wake Robin (Longview), Mary M. Knight, and Puyallup High Schools.

Students competed in a variety of practicum areas including general forestry knowledge, compass usage & pacing, timber stand improvement, timber cruising (volume estimation), plant & tree identification, forestry tool identification, chainsaw parts identification and troubleshooting, slope determination, tree disorders & entomology, and legal description (map interpretation). Throughout the competition, students had the opportunity to work side by side with forestry industry professionals from various organizations including the WSU Chelan County Extension, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), United States Forest Service (USFS), Forestry Sciences Laboratories, Longview Fibre, Valley Saw, Wenatchee Valley College, and Environmental Forestry, Inc.

High scoring individuals for the competition included: 1^st place: Tyler Allen of Chelan, 2^nd: Tom Williamson of Mt. Baker, 3^rd: Jewel Case of Wenatchee High School, 4^th: Jelena Kensworthy of Colville, and 5^th: Alex Graves of Wenatchee, FFA members from throughout the state are preparing themselves for the Washington State FFA Forestry competition, to be held on May 2^nd at Pack Forest, outside of Eatonville, WA.

Tyler Allen, who was the 1^st place individual, also received awards in skill areas including 1^st Place in legal desrcription, 1^st Place in tree disorders, 1^st place in slope determination, 2^nd in Tool Identification, and 2^nd in Plant indentification. The team finished 4^th joining Tyler were Jesse Allen, Curtis Pusey, and Tucker Cool.

Also competing for Chelan were Blake Soreano, Zach Sandum, Austin Harmon, Andrew Jones, Chelsea Gocke, Tim Stockdale, Ross Young, Rudy Barrios, Keannu Allen, Santiago Ruvalacava, Jose Lopez, Cindy Zavala, Ryan Sargent, Kelli Lafferty, Gerrick Lutz, Eduardo Moran, Brenda Galvan, Samantha Moser, Rossana Vargas, Bony Montes, Wendy Zavala, Brenda Leyva, Yolly Salles, and Diana Farias.

Photo Caption: The Chelan FFA Timber Beasts for 2008 at the NCW Forestry Career Development Event at Squilchuck State Park.

Photo Caption: Tyler Allen was the big winner at the 2008 NCW Forestry CDE, earning 1^st place individual and winning the Slope Determination, Tree Disorders, and Legal Description practicums and placing second in Tool and Tree Identification.