The East Knox FFA recently represented the state of Ohio and competed in the Eastern Regional National FFA Nursery/Landscape Career Development Event held at the Eastern States Exposition in West Springfield, Massachusetts on Sept. 13-14.

Seniors Aiden Kapper and Braylon Evans, junior Mackenzie Wilson, and sophomore Ava Page placed fifth out of a field of FFA teams representing the 18 states in the Eastern Region of the United States. The top three teams and the top three individuals in the eastern region received awards for their ranking at the banquet held on Saturday night at the Sheraton Hotel in Springfield, Massachusetts. 

The team qualified for the Eastern Regional CDE by placing second in the State Nursery/Landscape Career Development Event hosted by the Delaware Area Career Center in Delaware last March. Individually, in the State contest, Kapper placed seventh, Page finished 13th, and Evans placed 53rd out of 294 contestants.

The Eastern Regional National Nursery/Landscape Career Development Event is an activity designed to demonstrate students’ skills in the area of Nursery and Landscape Management. In the event, the students completed hands-on activities of demonstrating proper and safe use of a power blower and a string trimmer. Students also took a general information test; completed estimation problems; did a verbal customer relation situation; identified various trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, groundcovers, weeds, and physiological problems of plants; and completed a propagating activity.   

This is the eleventh time that an East Knox FFA Nursery/Landscape team has represented Ohio at a national event with three of those being at the Eastern States Exposition in West Springfield, Massachusetts, and eight at the National FFA Convention Event in Indianapolis, Indiana; Louisville, Kentucky; or Kansas City, Missouri.