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The Roseburg News Review—October 20. 2006
Five energetic, hardworking high school students earned the money to compete in the FFA national forestry championship competitions by working for the Cow Creek Band in a specially designed job creation project.
By Teresa Williams
Stephanie Rogers doesn't like hearing that she's lucky to be heading for Indianapolis this weekend.
She can give lots of reasons — hard work, community support and a good teacher among them — for why the Days Creek FFA forestry team is heading to national competition, and luck isn't one of them.
Days Creek is the first Oregon FFA chapter to send forestry teams to nationals two years in a row and its the only team from Douglas County to compete at the national level this year.
Rogers, 16, has an advantage over her teammates because she went to nationals as an alternate last year. She didn't compete, so she gets another shot at competition. FFA doesn't allow members to compete in the same category more than once at the national level.
For Cody O'Sullivan, Julia Kehoe, Steven Sands and Christy Stone, the trip will be a first.
Forestry teams from the West Coast tend not to do well at nationals. The trees are different, and so are forestry methods. The team hopes to place in the top 10, but their teacher, Mark Hopfer, thinks they may be the first team west of the Mississippi to take home the championship.
"This group has got the will to win that national contest," he said. "They've also got the ability to do it."
The contest will include tree identification, tool identification, timber cruising, timber stand improvement, interviews, compass and pacing, maps, general knowledge and a group activity.
The team is most worried about timber cruising, where they figure the board volume for particular trees. But all of the contests will be difficult.
"You have to study everything," said 16-year-old Kehoe.
The district and state competitions were both at Tiller, and the Days Creek team gets coaching from Forest Service personnel.
"I think a lot of people in our community want to help us," Rogers said.
"The biggest reason we get to forestry so many times is community support and community people training teams," Hopfer said. "We wouldn't be as tough in forestry as we are if it wasn't for those people."
The Cow Creek Band of the Umpqua Tribe of Indians put the students to work in its RV park so they could raise money for the trip.
"If it wasn't for the Cow Creeks, we would never get to the championships financially," Hopfer said.
But next week, the team will be on its own. The group has been practicing.
"You actually have to work at it, like really hard," Kehoe said.
None of the members plans to pursue a career in forestry, but their knowledge comes in handy, in a nerdy sort of way, Rogers said. They usually know what kind of trees they're looking at.