When you walk into the Ag Room at Weston High School, the first thing you notice is all the banners hanging from the ceiling; each represents a placement in a Career Development Event (CDE) in Area or State FFA competition.

The tradition of hanging “Blue Felt” from the rafters continued on October 2nd, when, under the guidance of Director Derek Shields, the WHS FFA Forestry team of Raleigh Guilliams, Aiden Dowd, Nathan Pierce, and Santiago Zuniga took second place at the Area 1 CDE event at Louisiana Tech University.

They earned this result through a strong finish in the CDE, which included tree identification, sawlog measurements, compass and pacing, map reading, equipment, disorders, and wood product identification, which also qualifies these four hard-working students for the State Forestry CDE that will be held on October 29th.

Individually, Pierce, who just a week earlier earned a $1000.00 scholarship as the top point getter at the state 4-H forestry competition, placed second in the contest, and Zuniga was the high-point individual of the combined identification portion of the contest.