Tension filled the air on Thursday, January 31, as members of the Cedar Springs FFA chapter competed at the annual district leadership contests. Six chapters from District one—Beal City, Cedar Springs, Chippewa Hills, Fremont, MACC, and Newaygo CTC—participated in the contests. The events that Cedar Springs took part in were Demonstration and Prepared Public Speaking. Each contest challenged different abilities of each member.

Two teams from Cedar Springs participated in demonstrations. The first team included Tyler Savickas and Braydin Bigney. Team two consisted of Justin Davis and David Schoenborn. Both teams had to choose one topic surrounding agriculture. The topics chosen were dairy farm safety and tractor safety. Each demonstration was required to fall within a time limit of 10 to 15 minutes. They spent many hours gathering items and building models to go along with their discussions. The teams worked very hard to do their best. The dairy farm safety team, Tyler Savickas and Braydin Bigney, received a silver award. Justin Davis and David Schoenborn, with their presentation on tractor safety, received a gold award and will move on to the FFA Region Five contests, the next level in the leadership competitions.

Two members competed in prepared public speaking. Those members were Whitney Decker and Brooke Lubben. In this contest, each participant was required to write a five to eight minute speech and answer five minutes of questions from the judges. The topics of each speech also had to surround agriculture. Both members did their best. Whitney Decker, with her speech on the current challenges in agriculture, received a silver award, and Brooke Lubben, speaking on biotechnology, received a gold award and is the alternate selection for regionals.

All of the participating members enjoyed the challenges of competing, and were happy to gain more leadership throughout the process.