The Uniontown FFA Meats Evaluation team competed at the National FFA Meats Evaluation contest held on October 25th, 2018 on the campus of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. The team from Uniontown qualified for the event by winning the Kansas FFA Meats Evaluation contest this past May. Each state sends their top placing team to compete at the national contest.
The team finished 6th out of 42 teams from across the US. All three members of the team, Haydon Schaaf, Nick Hathaway and Gavin Fry, finished in the Gold Emblem division of individuals, which is the top 30% of the 126 members that competed. Haydon Schaaf led the way with a 9th place individual finish. Nick Hathaway was one of four contestants in the entire contest to earn a perfect retail cut identification score. Texas, North Dakota, Washington, Oklahoma and Missouri were the five teams to finish ahead of Kansas(Uniontown).
FFA members who compete in the contest must place six primal and/or carcass classes, quality and yield grade four beef carcasses, answer ten questions over two of the primal/carcass classes, identify 30 retail beef, pork and lamb cuts, complete a team activity testing their knowledge over muscles, bones, value-based pricing and meat formulation and take a 50 question test over their knowledge of meat science.
Haydon Schaaf and Nick Hathaway are seniors at Uniontown High School while Gavin Fry is a freshman at Kansas State University. The team is coached by Uniontown FFA Advisor Scott Sutton.