Hunterdon County 4-H Dairy Club Members excelled once again at the state level.
The New Jersey Competition was held March 21 in Monmouth County.
The Junior Dairy Bowl Team, consisting of John Hunt, Gianna Novak and Sadie Strober, won first place and the right to represent New Jersey at the National Contest in June. They will be joined by Ariel Staffin, of Somerset County, in order to have a more competitive team of four members instead of three.
The Senior Division was won by Alanna Staffin, of Somerset County, followed by Alex Eldridge in second place, Amanda Wengryn in third place and Daniel Persichilli in fourth place. These four winners also will represent New Jersey at the National Competition.
Fifth place and alternate is Skylar Delbeni, also from Hunterdon.
The county winners all represent Dilts Corner and Mt. Airy 4-H Dairy clubs.
John, Alex and Amanda are all from West Amwell Township and students at South Hunterdon Regional High School. Gianna and Sadie are from Delaware Township and along with Skylar, from East Amwell, are students at Hunterdon Central. Daniel is from Pennington and is a student at Hopewell Valley Central High School.
John Hunt, of Mt. Airy Dairy, also won the intermediate speech contest. His speech was “Keys to Quality Milk.” He will compete with other young people in his age group from all over the country.
A new team representing Mt. Airy Dairy this year includes Faith Hollyer, Francesca Streicher and Jacob VanDoren. This team also competed in the Junior Dairy Bowl contest and finished fourth. They did an excellent job in their first year of competition.
The coaches for these teams are club leaders Betty Jane Hunt, Kristina Wengryn and Jaime Young.
The speech and dairy bowl winners will compete at the National Holstein Convention being held in St. Charles, Illinois June 22-26.
In addition to being busy practicing, they will need to raise approximately $3,000. Watch for their fundraisers over the next couple months.
Those who would like to donate in the meantime should send donations to: Betty Jane Hunt, 236 Rocktown-Lambertville Road, Lambertville,08530. Checks should be made out to Hunterdon County 4-H Dairy Council with a memo “for Dairy Bowl Trip.”
