After winning the Regional FFA Nursery and Landscape CDE, the team qualified to compete in the state contest at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville. They will now represent Tennessee in the national contest.

 Team members are:

- Abby Anderson, Junior - 3rd high individual

- Jenna Fabozzi, Junior - 2nd high individual

- Molly Sayre, Sophomore - 7th high individual

- Cole Tipton, Sophomore - 1st high individual

Out of 1800 possible points, David Crockett FFA totaled 1307 points (73%), 163 points better than 2nd place Gallatin.

The contest is composed of 5 individual events and 1 team event: a general knowledge exam, identification of 116 plant species, landscape estimating, a written assistance exercise, and a nursery production exercise. The team activity involved a landscape drawing and presentation of the drawing to a panel. The written exercise included a hand-written business letter. The overall contest is quite extensive, pulling skills from mathematics in landscape estimation, English in written assistance, and biology in the general knowledge exam.

It's a tremendous accomplishment to win a state FFA contest. The team spent several hours preparing and training for the contest with practices, study, and hard work; they definitely earned the title of state champs. With over 13,000 FFA members in TN, there are plenty of people who go 'all out' to win.

This is the 4th year in a row that David Crockett FFA has had a State FFA Championship CDE Team, and the 2nd State Nursery and Landscape CDE win in 3 years. It's rare to win a State FFA contest; Abby, Molly, and Cole just accomplished something even more rare, which so few have ever done -- they won 2 state FFA contests.

Now comes the reward -- the opportunity to compete against the other 49 states in the National FFA Nursery and Landscape CDE during the National FFA Convention in Louisville in October. They will spend 2 days with state-winning nursery teams from Alaska to Florida. Before then, they will spend countless hours preparing.