Legendary Leadership

The officers; the state staff; that's the way we became the S.O. Bunch! This parody of the famous Brady Bunch theme song kicked off SOAR 2011. But why would we begin one of our camps with a parody of one of the most chastised television sitcoms in the past 50 years? Because it is Legen- wait for it.... and I hope you are not lactose-intolerant because the last part is... dary!

On a serious note, the real reason that we decided to mimic the Brady Bunch involves our camp content. Indiana FFA conferences have changed quite a lot in the past 15-20 years. In the past, conferences had parli and quiz bowl contests to better teach members about the basics of FFA. We decided to bring these contests back at SOAR this year. While the contests still have a few kinks that need to be worked out, we believe that most of our SOAR attendees enjoyed these contests. So when we decided to go back in time with content, we also decided to make our theme vintage and retro. This meant that our breakout group names were old tv sitcoms, so we had groups like M*A*S*H, I Love Lucy, Leave it to Beaver, Gilligan's Island, and the Munsters!

Members of "Bewitched" discuss the parliamentary
procedure contest. They were the champions!

Another retro idea that returned to SOAR was the Top Leader Award. Campers voted on two members of each group as a "Top Group Leader." With 14 groups, we had 28 Top Group Leaders. Then there was another round of voting to determine the 4 "Top Leaders." After voting ended, it was announced that Bender Smith from Tri High, Mallarie Stookey of Warsaw, Syx Russel from STAR Academy, and Morgan Moore from Western Wayne were all top leaders! Congratulations to them!!!


And of course, one of the most exciting moments of the entire conference was at the banquet, when the Truck Stampede drawing was held. A winner was drawn, and all 300+ banquet guests congratulated the winner via phone. The ticket was sold by a member from the Shenandoah FFA chapter.


All in all, there were well over 250 members in attendance at SOAR 2011, and we really hope that it was Legendary for all!

Many, many Truck Stampede Tickets were sold!!!

Gianna Hartman leads SOAR Campers through the Personal Growth session.