ARCANUM — Members of the Arcanum MVCTC FFA recently competed in the District 5 Ag Mechanics Skills Contest held at St. Marys High School. Members of the team were Alex Wooten, Caleb Hartman and Carson Tegtmeyer.

The purpose of the Ag Mechanics Skills Contest is to assess the students’ skills in agricultural mechanics that occur in maintenance and repair. Students demonstrated the proper use of tools and apply tool use and knowledge to daily situations in agricultural mechanical environments. Some of the activities students completed were: Welding, Electrical Soldering, Pipe Flaring and Fuel Identification. The team finished second in the district and qualified for the state finals.

On March 31, the team traveled to Ohio State ATI in Wooster to compete with other teams from across the State. During the finals they completed various stations including precision measuring, thread tapping and tool sharpening. The team finished sixth in Ohio and Wooten finished as the 8th place individual.

Another hands-on mechanical contest was the Outdoor Power Contest which was held April 11 at Koenig Equipment in Germantown. Members of Outdoor Power Team were RJ Brothers, Nick Sharritts and Alex Wooten.

The Outdoor Power Equipment Career Development Event (CDE) is an extension of the Agricultural Education classroom and laboratory. Additionally, this CDE serves as an authentic assessment designed to evaluate students’ knowledge in recognizing and repairing malfunctions in outdoor power equipment. The skills Agricultural Education students employ in this CDE are the same skills required by outdoor power equipment technicians. The team finished sixth in the district.