Photo Courtesy: Marcus Arnold
Hayley Smith
Editor-in-Chief
Butler’s livestock judging team has brought back multiple titles from the two competitions they have attended this year. The competing team, which consists of eight sophomores, brought back titles from the American Royal contest in Kansas City and the National Barrow Show in Austin, Minn.
The Livestock Judging team is comprised of students who compete in collegiate contests all across the country, coached by Head Coach Marcus Arnold and Assistant Coach Taylor Frank. These students are chosen carefully.
“We bring the best of the best in to try to be as competitive as possible,” Arnold said. “Our program is built around the philosophy of bring in good students academically, and let that be the focus, and then focus on the judging component later.”
According to Arnold, the eight sophomores have a cumulative GPA of a 3.75, with no member of the team having below a 3.7 GPA.
The team normally goes to six contests across the country, while this year they will attend seven. The team attends 10 practice contests, which both the sophomore and freshman teams will attend.
At the contests, the team’s job is to rank the animals, which may include cattle, hogs, sheep and goats. They judge on market animals, which are animals intended for meat purposes, as well as breeding animals. They rank the animals and then experts or officials do the same thing. The rankings are compared, and that is where the scores come from.
Afterwards, the team members have to orally give a logical reason behind their rankings.
This was the first time in 20 years that Butler’s team has made the trip to the National Barrow Show. This was an all hog contest, according to Arnold. They were named the Champion Team Overall and the Champion Team in Reasons, which is the oral reasoning behind their rankings. Along with those two titles, the team had the High Individual Overall and the High Individual in Reasons, brought home by Sophomore Haley Stark. The team is proud of how they competed at this contest.
“It’s humbling to see our hard work pay off in such great dividends,” sophomore P.D. Miller said.
The team swept the American Royal contest, winning by a total of 36 points. They won in every division and received Champion Team Overall, Champion Team Reasons, and Champion Team in Cattle, Sheep and Goats and Swine. Sophomore Payton Dahmer was awarded High Individual Overall and High Individual Reasons. According to Arnold, this is the first time in over six years that Butler has won a national contest.
“Even though we won with such great lengths…we won every category, we are not going to be complacent,” Stark said. “We are going to let it motivate us more.”
The team is constantly meeting to practice. The students start practice in August, before the school year even begins. Their season does not end until the end of March. The teams practice four to five days a week, and their weekends consist of traveling to look at animals for practice.
The team will travel to a variety of different contests throughout the rest of the year, including events in Louisville, Ky., Denver, Colo., Fort Worth, Texas, San Antonio, Texas and Houston, Texas.
