One of our students, junior Mackenzie Camacho, is going high places within the FFA! ABC30 came to Minarets and interviewed her on her great success at the National FFA Convention where she received first place in plant systems. Along with FCA, CFS, NHS and other FFA teams she is a very bright and successful about her work.
When asked about the ABC 30 interview, Mackenzie said that “It went really well, they asked a lot of questions and I gave them the answers though most of the questions were sort of questions that were asked in the interview at nationals so I had already practiced the answers and it went really well”. She first started when she contacted farmers to ask them about their problems, their orchards and crops. Mackenzie said that she “learned about Botryosphaeria and I decided to do a research project on it. I was able to work with the UC Davis lab extension to help perfect my experiment. And I put it all together into a paper and a board and competed at state”.
Mackenzie later went to compete at nationals and submitted her paper. “I got accepted into this at twelve and then I went to nationals had an interview and then I was told later that I had made it into the top three, then the next day I got to on stage in front of sixty nine thousand people and they told me that I won and which was a lot of fun. It was really cool. And then I came back and people are very happy. I got interviewed by ABC 30 and it's just been really fun”. says Mackenzie. She also mentioned that while on stage it felt very nerve wracking infront of all the people. “You can see the lights and all the people but you were mostly focusing on the person who was talking and handing you the awards because they were going to tell you stuff”.
In the future she intends to compete again next year and to continue her project on how to stop the spreading of its life by disposing of the branches. Mackenzie continued by saying “And I hope to be able to work on school and other factories. I’m really excited for forestry natural resources coming up because my team has a good shot of winning this year”. To those who are interested in getting involved, she also says “I would say people say it a lot but do get involved, nobody is going to pressure you to stay in something if you don’t want to be in it”. Mackenzie is the star of our FFA hearts and we’re excited to see where she heads off to next.
Check out the ABC30 Feature here!