In competition, students reap rewards of farm training

Five teams of high school students from across Southern California gathered at the 80-acre farm belonging to Fillmore High School on Saturday morning for a skills competition that involved driving farm equipment.

At the Farm School facility along the banks of the Santa Clara River south of the town, students showed their ability to back up with a trailer, cultivate row crops, use a three-point hookup and pick up an object with a skip loader, among other challenges.

Wearing the blue corduroy jackets that have long been traditional to the Future Farmers of America organization, the students displayed skill — and nervousness.

"OK, you know what to do!" teacher John Avila yelled encouragingly to his student Ben Watts, who was driving a skip loader. Avila teaches agricultural education at Carpinteria High School, where Watts is a senior.

Watts put the skip loader in gear, backed it up, lowered the bucket, motored forward and gently lifted a basketball off the sandy surface of a corral. A handful of observers, including his parents, John and Mary, and his brother Ivan, cheered.

"I like it," Ben said afterward. "I did it nice and easy. Slow and steady wins the race."

The students had five minutes to complete tasks, but were more likely to lose points for inaccuracy than for not finishing in time.

"I'm very nervous," said Andres Grimaldo, a sophomore. "I've never driven a tractor without power steering before."

He explained that at his high school in Santa Maria, local dealers donated new equipment to the school. The tractors at the farm school in Fillmore date back decades.

Scott Beylik, a tomato farmer who went to Fillmore High School and volunteered to judge the three-point hookup competition for the event, sympathized with Andres.

"Twenty years ago, I was one of these kids, nervous as heck, trying to back up a trailer," he said.

Avila believes agricultural training teaches skills that can be useful in surprising ways.

"I was at a class at Cal Poly a few years back, and I asked them what high school course prepared them the most for college," he said. "And I thought I was going to hear a student say that my physics teacher was really good, or my chemistry teacher, or whatever. But what one student said was that it was his welding class. He said everyone has physics, everyone has chemistry, but it was his welding skills that made him competitive."

Though tomato grower Beylik said he was more concerned about teaching safety than the competitive aspect, the students clearly care about who won or lost. After successfully completing the difficult three-point hookup, Ben was so thrilled, he jumped into the arms of his older brother Ivan.

"He nearly broke his brother's back," joked his mother.

Individual medals were handed out after the event. The top three finishers among the schools in the advanced (experienced) category were Carpinteria, Fillmore, and San Luis Obispo. In the novice category, the top three finishers were Fillmore High School, Carpinteria, and Santa Maria.