Mission Valley FFA wins historic state championship, sets sights on nationals
Megan Strickland
Laurel Rigby, Josey Motichka, Courtnee Clairmont and Micah McClure make up the first state-winning Mission Valley FFA team. The team will head to national competition in the fall.
Megan Strickland
Ronan Senior Micah McClure judges swine during a chilly competition
Megan Strickland
Ronan Senior Laurel Rigby examines a livestock carcass.
Megan Strickland
Megan Strickland
Megan Strickland
Megan Strickland
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RONAN – Mission Valley FFA members were in shock after receiving their ranking in the state livestock judging championship at the end of March: after a steady streak of second places against some of the best teams in the western United States, judges said the team had plummeted to 29th place in Montana’s highest level of competition.
Ronan senior and Chapter President Laurel Rigby had just won the top prize and a $1,000 scholarship for individual competition, but was in tears because of the team’s low ranking. Team members and Coach Reese McAlpin knew something was off for the team to have performed so poorly.
“Even on our worst day we should have placed and been up on stage,” Polson freshman Josey Motichka said. “We were all crushed.”
A two-week appeal of the scorecards proved intuition was correct; judges found that Motichka’s final scorecard had not been added to the total team score. It catapulted the four-person team to first place by a 35-point margin. The team also includes Ronan freshman Courtnee Clairmont and Ronan senior/ Chapter Vice President Micah McClure.
“We just had a little mishap with the scorecard,” is how McClure summarized the nail-biting win. “But once they got everything fixed and we found out we won, then it was pretty exciting.”
It is the first state championship for the 76-year-old FFA chapter. The team was the best of 262 competitors from 68 chapters.
“To put it into perspective, Kalispell pulls from Whitefish, Columbia Falls, Flathead, and Glacier,” McAlpin said. “Missoula pulls from all of Missoula … We are the district with the big guys. This is the first team to pull it together and win state.”
The team will compete at national competition in Louisville, Kentucky in October. Rigby and McClure are both headed to colleges in Wyoming where livestock judging is a school-sanctioned event, so they will get time off for the national competition. The college coaches have even offered to house the high schoolers and give them some pointers on the road trip to the airport for national competition.
With nationals in sight, the younger team members are trying to find more members.
“We are trying to really recruit to keep going, because we are losing two really important members to be competitive,” Motichka said. “We are going to work hard to get more kids to join.”
Motichka said that it might take a lot of hard work, but that it is worth it.
“This core group of us have been in this thing for two years,” Motichka said. “It’s a very close bond. Going into this we didn’t think we would win state. We’ve come back and been this competitive because we put in the time and the effort and went to the camps. It’s not just about the family, it’s like we’re family.”
The three ladies on the team all started judging livestock in 4-H many moons before their high school FFA debut, but McClure is proof you don’t have to have been doing the event long to excel: he’s got two years of experience under his belt.
“It teaches you lifelong skills,” Rigby said. “Like paying for college, that was huge.”
Rigby will attend Casper College with a Livestock Judging scholarship.
Mission Valley FFA is working to expand, with Polson School District recently officially approving joining the chapter. McAlpin said he is working to get other local school districts to join.
Community members interested in supporting the chapter can contact any of the four students traveling to nationals to purchase $10 raffle tickets to help raise funds for the travel costs. Half a hog, beef, a lap quilt, custom ranch sign and rifle are up for grabs.
“We hope to represent Montana the best we can at nationals,” Rigby said.
