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Livestock shows teach life lessons
By JOY DAVIS-PLATT, Times Staff Writer
BROOKSVILLE -- As students prepare for the annual livestock competitions at this year's Hernando County Fair and Youth Livestock Show, one teacher says that most of the really important lessons have already been taught. "Helping these kids is exactly like coaching," said Rick Ahrens, Hernando High School's Future Farmers of America adviser and a former girls soccer coach. "You can't coach during the game. That all has to be done prior -- before they ever step foot into the ring." Ahrens remembers one student who, during a competition, gave a speech titled, "Everything I Needed to Know About Being an Ophthalmologist I Learned from My Pig." Despite its tongue-in-cheek tone, he said, the speech related how the attention to detail, record-keeping skills, sense of responsibility and self-confidence that the student learned in the FFA would later serve her in her chosen profession. "Really, those are the things we're trying to teach the kids," he said. After 25 years of judging livestock shows himself, Ahrens said the one thing he had learned is that, in the end, it all comes down to one person's opinion at one given moment. The moment anyone gets caught up in second-guessing judges, they've missed the point. "Don't get me wrong; I want to win," he said. "But if we don't win, I'll still love all my kids the next day, and I'll be proud of them." As both spring break and the end of the school year draw near, Ahrens said his students were scrambling to keep up with their increased workloads, but they are holding up to the challenge. "We're just so busy we don't know which way to turn," said Ahrens, who has more than 20 fair entrants scheduled from his class, and some who are showing more than one animal. "But they all knew what they were signing up for. They won't quit." On show day, when well-heeled and immaculately groomed animals are led around the pen, people often don't realize the work that has gone into the end product, he said. "They don't see these kids getting up in the middle of a rainstorm to go out and exercise their pig," he said. "They don't think about them getting up early on Christmas morning to clean a stall. Raising these show animals is not about teaching them agricultural practices, per se. It's more about responsibility and commitment." Recently, Ahrens said, he took four students to compete at the Florida State Fair, where all received blue ribbons for their animals and showmanship. But that wasn't what made his day. "People would walk up to me and tell me how helpful and polite my kids are," he said. "That tells me I've taught them something that will take them much farther in life than that blue ribbon ever will. That's what's important to me."
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