PRESTON — Larin Crossley said Idaho teams locked up the top five spots in the Poultry Contest during a recent Future Farmers of America competition, and his Preston High School team took the top spot.
“There were 27 teams that participated from Utah, Idaho and Wyoming,” Crossley said. “We won the poultry evaluation.”
That competition was the Northern Utah FFA Invitational hosted at the Box Elder Fairgrounds in Tremonton, Utah, Feb. 18-19.
Crossley, an agriculture teacher at Preston High School, has been the FFA advisor for the school for 33 years. He said it's one of the best parts of his job.
“It's the icing on the cake,” he said. “I like providing the opportunity for the students and the parents.”
In the Poultry Contest, students are judged in several areas, including evaluating the quality of a carcass, identifying carcass parts, grading the quality of both the inside and outside of eggs, evaluating the quality of both boneless and bone-in processed poultry, and taking a written exam.
The Northern Utah FFA Invitational included 14 different competitions. The Preston FFA program fielded teams in a couple of other competitions, taking second place in the Milk Quality & Products contest and sixth place in the Floriculture contest.
Last month's competition is the kind of success Crossley's teams continue to see over the years he has been involved.
“Last year, we won state in Poultry, Milk Quality & Products, and Food Science,” Crossley said. “They also did well at the nationals.”
The Milk Quality & Products team took fifth at the national competition in 2025, while the Food Science team took sixth and the Poultry team finished in 17th place.
Crossley said there is a bit of a caveat that comes with doing so well. If a team wins its state competition and competes in the national competition, those students are no longer allowed to compete in that category in the future. If those students want to continue competing, they will have to be in a different category.
The next focus for the Preston FFA Team is the state competition, which will be held in April. It's not just a competition, but it's also a full conference, during which there are some lectures and an awards ceremony. At this state conference, students in Idaho FFA programs pursuing a degree will receive their state FFA degree.
Crossley explains that acquiring the state FFA degree comes with a lot of requirements, including working on a home project since their freshman year of high school. They apply for the degree and go through a review process before they are awarded the distinction.
“We have 10 students who will be getting that this year,” Crossley said.
Although they don't all compete, there are 130 students in Preston High School's FFA program.