After a tremendous semester, Stephenville FFA is looking at a bright future.

  Stephenville FFA placed highly in the 2018 fall competitions led by Ryan Best, the Ag teacher and FFA coach.

  “Our students have competed at the National FFA Convention with their Agriscience fair projects,” Best said. “We had 18 students compete at the national convention, five of those projects were named national champion, two projects were named national runner-up, one was third place, one was fourth place and one was a national finalist.”

  Best is hopeful and looking forward to the semester ahead of  Stephenville FFA.

  “We’re coming off of a semester where we had a lot of success, so it’s going to be a little of a rebuilding semester trying to get everyone back on track,” Best said. “But I think that once we do that, we’re going to be knocking on the door being as successful as we were this last semester.”

  This past semester has had a great outcome due to the passionate students.

  “The 18 students that we took to the National Convention just poured their heart and soul out into that project, and it very much showed with the results that we had,” Best said. “To our knowledge, we think that ties the very best that Texas has ever done at National Convention in Agriscience Fairs of any school in the state of Texas.”

  The FFA students have been studying for this upcoming year for events and stock show.

  “We are gearing up to begin our career development events, as well as stock show season.” Best said. “We’ll be training 13 career development event teams, and then we’ve got students competing at all four major Texas stock shows, as well as our county stock show.”

  Best has a real passion for his students and hopes to make a big impact in their lives.

  “I wanted to be an Ag teacher because of the influence that my Agriculture teacher in high school had upon me. My Ag teacher, his name was Rod Savage, was the single greatest teacher that I ever had, not just in the classroom, but in life as well.” Best said. “The very first day, that I had him in class, he walks in and he tells us ‘Who in here thinks that they’re a leader?’ and a few people raised their hand and he says, ‘I want you all to realise that there are three ways in life to be a leader, first is by example, second is by example, and third is by example. We all set an example, so we are all leaders. The question that we have to ask ourselves is, what kind of leader do we want to be?’