By GLEN WERLING
Southern Wells High School has two state championship teams — one of which will go on to compete nationally.
Gabe McElhaney, a junior, and Valiant Drennan, who graduated with the Class of 2022, won the small engines competition at the Indiana FFA convention in Indianapolis in June. The state championship is the highest honor in that competition. Small engines is not a competition offered at the national level.
McElhaney, Perrin Gates, Owen King, Keith Pluimer and their coach Abby Nusbaumer took home the top title in the ag sales competition and will be able to compete nationally — also in Indianapolis — Oct. 26-29.
Volunteer advisor Annette Thompson pointed out that the teams from Southern Wells also earned several high place finishes in other competitions at the state level, including:
• Second place in multi-media scrapbook
• Third place in parliamentary procedure
• Third place in plant and soil science/natural resources demonstration
• Third place in discovery degree — food science demonstration (a competition for the eighth grade level of FFA)
• Fourth place in food science
• Fourth place in livestock judging
The Southern Wells chapter also placed in the top 10 chapters around the state in raising funds for the national FFA organization.
“We are currently ranked 16th in the country for FFA chapters,” Thompson said. The placing is based on Southern Wells’ competitions, volunteer hours and student activities, she explained.
Thompson was pleased by how well Southern Wells represented itself at the state convention, observing that the chapter took 35 participants to the state competition. That was more than most schools — including those with a much higher student population than Southern Wells.
“All this for a little school in the middle of a corn field in Poneto, Indiana, it’s pretty darn good,” Thompson observed.
In the motor competition, McElhaney and Drennan were given 75 minutes to completely reassemble a 5.5 horsepower Briggs and Stratton engine that’s in parts and pieces in a plastic tote.
They also had to complete two tests — a written test and a parts identification test. Part of the competition includes multiple skill stations that range from demonstrating proficiency in diagnosing an electrical problem with a motor to measuring tolerances with micrometers.
It’s a skill that McElhaney plans to use in the future. He hopes to be able to attend the University of Northwest Ohio to study high performance motor sports. While the engines he will be working with would be considerably more advanced, the basics are the same. He already is working at Lingenfelter Performance Engineering Build Center in Decatur.
The key to success in FFA is finding a competition that fits best with what the FFA member is most interested in, McElhaney said. He was already working with engines. The small engine competition was second nature for him.
He and Drennan’s best time at reassembling the engine is 52 minutes. That includes starting and running the engine and meeting the RPM requirements of the contest.
But the competition is not a speed competition, but a competition of skill, McElhaney said. It doesn’t matter if the engine is put together in 10 minutes or 75 minutes. “They just want it to be right and you have to complete a big checklist of everything that has to be done. They all have to be checked off,” McElhaney said. “We did the best on the tests and in all of the skill stations and we got the most points on our motor — 98 out of 100 possible.”
The skill earned each of the boys $5,000 scholarships from Universal Technical Institute a for-profit technical institute based out of Scottsdale, Ariz.
For ag sales, the team of McElhaney, Gates, King and Pluimer, led by Nusbaumer, took a test over products and marketing strategies. At the national level, they’ll be tested on marketing and product information.
“And how to find what products are the best solutions for different scenarios,” Pluimer said.
This year the team was tasked with selling a panel of judges on animal health products from Merck — chiefly Merck’s Safeguard dewormer, Ultra Boss animal fly control, and AquaSol chicken de-wormer.
“After the test you enter into sale-prep,” Pluimer said. “They give you a scenario and different questions that each individual has to answer and come up with their own answers. Your answers to these questions cannot be the same as your partners’,” he said.
The questions address how each “salesman” could influence the customer to purchase the Merck products they are trying to sell. Each student has to come up with his or her own sales strategy to build rapport with a customer to address their wants as well as their needs.
The individual sale is where the most points are earned, Pluimer explained. “You as an individual have to figure out what products they need and sell them the product that will best fit that need.”
Coming into the competition, the judges already know about the products and their efficacy and they know what products will work best with what scenario.
“They will give you the best feedback, or even pushback, that they can,” Pluimer said. “They may ask you a question like, ‘Why should I do this when I can do that?’”
With their background with the products, the judges can also ensure that the FFA members are not making false claims about the products.
McElhaney said that there’s really no need for hyperbole because the information that his team members were provided with gave them enough persuasive data to make the sale.
Southern Wells was in competition with 10 other chapters — some with multiple teams — at the state level. All of the teams were given some information. The Southern Wells team also contacted a representative from Merck Animal Health ahead of the competition who also provided the team members with materials they could use to become better acquainted with the products and their advantages over similar products of a competitor.
“We knew what the product would be that we would have to sell a couple months in advance,” McElhaney said. “That way we could prep before going into the contest,” Gates said.
The sales call by the team, the individual sales and the test responses by the Southern Wells team were more in-line with what the judges wanted to see than the other teams competing. That’s why Southern Wells won.
“We were the closest to what they considered a perfect sale,” McElhaney said.
The product the team will have to sell in October will not be the same as it was for the state convention, since the competition is to measure their salesmen skills, not their ability to sell a particular product. In August they will find out what they will be required to sell in October.
“A lot of people don’t realize that FFA competitions are all academic competitions,” Thompson said. “It’s all their smarts.”
glenw@news-banner.com
