For as long as I can remember, I have always loved playing sports. As I grew older, I became more and more invested in my sports teams, which built me into the competitive person I am today. In high school, my two favorite sports to play were football and baseball. I was lucky enough to be surrounded by a close group of friends that also had very similar competitive mindsets. We were dedicated to our team and we were going to give it everything we had in order to hopefully win. Throughout our four years of high school, this competitive mindset allowed us to achieve a lot of success for our small school.

When I started my FFA journey my freshman year, it didn’t take me long to put this competitive mindset I had developed to use, whether it was fall speeches, spring CDEs and LDEs or even just playing games at my chapter’s barnwarming. I enjoyed being surrounded by other members who had that same competitive mindset we use to chase our goals. I have been able to meet a lot of great people and make a lot of good friends by competing against them at FFA contests or sporting events, many of whom I still talk to today. While we are being competitive, it is important we continue to be mindful of others and don’t allow our competitiveness to get in the way of friendships. When you look back, those friendships are what you are going to remember the most.

I encourage you all to stay competitive and use it to chase your goals.