Sweet Home placed third out of eight teams at the state forestry championships at Central Oregon Community College in Bend.
“The kids did a really good job this season and they competed really hard over there,” Coach Dustin Nichol said.
Big winners for Sweet Home included Saul Jones, to took first in the pole climb after cutting four seconds off his time over the last two weeks. Dennis Baxter was first in power bucking.
The top points scorer was sophomore Julie Morgan, who placed in eight of the 12 events she competed in, Nichol said.
“She did a really good job.”
Other multiple winners were EJ Nichol, Justin Wolfe, Curtis Froman and Cody Froman, he said.
Also placing in more than one event was Sydney Nichol, who is an eighth-grader.
Dustin Nichol said newcomer Kara Baker, a freshman, “stepped up and learned a lot of new tasks,” winning three ribbons. “She holds a lot of promise for the future,” he said.
The event included some 140 competitors in 17 events, Nichol said. It was Sweet Home’s first competition of the year in which all the technical and physical events were held at the same time.
“Normally, in ours and other schools’ competitions, we only have 12 or 13 events,” he said. “There are always some technical ones we don’t get to.”