SMHS FFA
When people hear the word FFA, Future Farmers of America, the one thing that comes to mind is that the organization strictly involves agriculture.
But as San Marcos High School Agriculture teacher Joseph Nino puts it, FFA is more than just farming and ranching.
“Even though there’s this connotation about FFA is just about cows, plows and sows,” Nino said. “There’s so much more, and there’s so many different avenues.”
One San Marcos High School student breaking the mold of what it means to be a part of San Marcos FFA is junior Paula Gomez Garcia.
Gomez Garcia became the first-ever San Marcos student to finish third place overall in the state, participating in Senior Spanish FFA Creed Speaking.
For Gomez Garcia, Spanish Creed Speaking just came naturally.
“I felt I had the most advantage because Spanish is my first language, so I’m very fluent with that.” Gomez Garcia said. “I knew more words than other people who were born here, and they were learning Spanish, or they didn’t practice it as I did. So I feel that was my advantage.”
In the last two years, Gomez Garcia saw a tremendous amount of success in Spanish Creed Speaking, qualifying for Area her freshman year, then qualifying for State her sophomore year.
Though Gomez Garcia’s fluency in Spanish was key in her success, Nino also saw that her passion for Spanish Creed Speaking puts the junior in a category of her own.
“She just has that positive energy whenever she competes,” Nino said. “The judges always say, ‘You can tell she’s really dedicated to it, has a drive for FFA and is passionate about it.’ That’s very rare to find in creed speakers.
“It seems that most of the time whenever we’re training any creed speaking teams, it’s, ‘You want to say it like it’s passionate.’ But sometimes it comes off a little twofaced and it’s hard to find a student who not only is saying the creed passionately, but actually believes in it. That’s what [Gomez Garcia] does. It’s a hard student to find who has that level of dedication to the FFA Creed,” Nino said.
In addition to her passion for creed speaking, Gomez Garcia adds another element that cannot be duplicated or faked: culture.
“There’s not a lot of people that blend their culture with what they do,” Gomez Garcia said. “I feel doing the Spanish creed is a good way to introduce my culture and the language I speak at my house, with my family, or with other people around me, and introduce my career path in what I want to do.”
Going into her junior year, Gomez Garcia worked on her creed presentation.
“We were practicing a lot of face movements and being flamboyant, meaning being more expressive, but not active,” Gomez Garcia said. “Being more realistic, more natural and expressive. So we were practicing being flamboyant and also [staying] in pace. I started going way too fast because I was nervous, so I wanted to be done with it as soon as I could. So we were practicing a lot with these. I have the volume, movements being flamboyant and bubbly.”
Nino also wanted Gomez Garcia to work on answering the questions which are a part of Creed Speaking competitions.
“I always tell people whenever you get to state, everybody knows the creed,” Nino said. ”Everybody has the creed memorized so it really comes down to the questions. The way you answer your questions and provide examples. So our main focus this past year was strictly on how we answer these questions and how we come off sounding excited, motivated and truly believing in what you’re preaching.”
Although Gomez Garcia had already advanced to both Area then State when she was a sophomore, she didn’t advance to the State finals until this year.
Both of [Nino and I] were praying,” Gomez-Garcia said, ”I was really nervous because most of the people there, they were seniors and other juniors. I’m a junior, but they had more experience than I did, and they seemed more confident, more prepared. … [When my name was announced] I was really excited. My mom was next to me and Mr. Nino was on the other side, and I was so excited for San Marcos.”
But going into the finals, both Gomez Garcia and Nino were thrown a curveball. In addition to speaking in front of the judges, Gomez Garcia also had to speak in front of a crowd of 30 people.
“I was nervous, and I’m sure she was nervous,” Nino said. “We’re just so used to only being three, four judges and just saying ‘hey, make sure you make eye contact with every judge and sound passionate about what you’re doing.’ I may have been more nervous because that’s what I was expecting and everybody goes in.”
With the added curveball, the nerves for Gomez Garcia were at an all-time high.
“I was so nervous because everyone was watching me,” Gomez Garcia said. “Every single person was watching me and listening to what I was saying. So I started shaking and I was trying to keep myself open. Because my legs and hands were shaking, I felt like my voice was shaking.”
Switching up their strategy, Nino gave Gomez Garcia a critical yet simple piece of advice.
“The most important thing I told her was ‘Hey, go in and go have fun,’” Nino said. “You’re Top 10 in the state. We know that you were top five in this heat and then there’s top five in another heat so you’re top 10 total in the state, so have fun and go kick butt.”
To also help battle the nerves, Gomez Garcia alternated between looking at the audience and the judges.
“I tried to balance where I looked,” Gomez Garcia said. ”I pretended to look at the audience and I looked somewhere else like a poster on a wall. For the judges, there’s always one judge that is looking at the creed speaker and one judge that is timing. So I try to look at them and then go back to the original judge and then go back to the audience.”
The strategy paid off as Gomez Garcia took home third place, making history for the San Marcos FFA and becoming a gamechanger for the program.
“It’s an amazing experience for us as ag teachers,” Nino said. “To be able to say we’ve got kids that may not have an agricultural background and may not have anything in farming or raising livestock, but we can put them in other pathways and avenues. They can be successful and still be successful within FFA.”
