Back to back win for Virginia Tech

With a team score of 2,508, an average of 46.45, Virginia Tech won the 89th Annual Intercollegiate Dairy Judging Contest. This marks the second year in a row that the team from Blacksburg, Va., has won the contest and the seventh time in contest history Virginia Tech has won the Super Bowl of collegiate contests. The team, coached by Katherine Knowlton and Mike Barnes, included the second and third overall individuals Paula Craun and Hannah Smith. The team was rounded out by Derek Heizer and Parker Welch.

In a close second, with a score of 2,500 was the team from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls paced by Sandra Kirchner who averaged 47.2 on twelve placings and six sets of reasons. Sandra's teammates included: Londa Johnson, Cortney Kieffer, and Jessica Lundgren. The team is coached by Steve Kelm.

It takes many volunteers to run the contest. In all, 40 some volunteers work on putting the contest together. On Sunday, the contest management, along with breed representatives, go through the barns to select contest classes. In many cases, six to eight animals are brought out for consideration. During this process one of the assistants logged some 20,000 steps on his pedometer . . . that equates to 7 to 10 miles of foot traffic across World Dairy Expo.

The animals that are selected for the contest come to the Coliseum on Monday afternoon. In all, 19 collegiate and 17 post-secondary teams placed the 12 classes. Later in the day, the contestents defended those decisions in oral reasons given to 16 contest officials. The contest results were released early Tuesday morning.

This college contest marked the 27th and final year that Dr. Dave Selner served as superintendent of the collegiate contest. In the 89-year history of the contest, there have been only four superintendents of the contest. Taking over the helm of the 2010 contest will be Hoard's Dairyman Associate Editor, Corey Geiger.