On April 8, 2025, the Arlington FFA Wildlife team competed at the Region 5 wildlife contest at the Jaegar ranch in Eastland. I am proud to announce that the team placed 1^st in Area 5 and 8th place in Region out of 66 teams! Morgan J. placed 2^nd and Catherine K. placed 3^rd individual out of 76! This secures the team a spot to compete at the Welder Wildlife Foundation in Corpus Christi in two weeks!

Area Wildlife Team Members: Zach B., Spencer D., Morgan J., Catherine K.

I am waiting on some data from a couple sources, but here is a little history of the Arlington High and now Arlington FFA wildlife team. The Wildlife Alliance for Youth started the Wildlife CDE contest through Texas FFA I believe in 1996-1997. Arlington High Ag Teacher Trey Polster (1985-2018) was one of the first to train a team and compete in the contest and helped to get it started. Since the start of the contest Arlington High had a team advance to the state contest every year except 2004, 2005, 2014 (trying to find data prior to 2003, it was all done by hand so tracking down that data is going to be difficult). When I was in high school 2006-2010, I competed and was on the state qualifying team in 2008,2009,2010. When the CTC opened and the Arlington High FFA merged with Martin FFA to become Arlington FFA in 2017-18, we continued the legacy and have had a team advance every year. Not on purpose but there were only two years that I had a student from another campus on the team otherwise it has been teams of AHS students.

To say I am proud is an understatement, this contest is one that I hold dear to my heart having competed as an AHS student and now train as an AHS teacher! I'm going to steal from Coach Peach when I say, if you have any of these students, please congratulate them on being a part of the legacy and leaving the legacy for the future Wildlife team!

Thank you to everyone who has helped us along the way to make sure that our students etch their name in the history of AHS!

Tanner Smith
Ag Science Teacher/FFA Advisor