After a cold, snowy beginning of the week, it was a relief for everyone that the precipitation originally predicted for Friday held off. The morning was cool, but warmed up quickly, and the contest organizers did an amazing job selecting a contest site that showed the judgers a combination of everything they had seen in practice throughout the week.
In four pits on the practice site, the students described soils formed in eolian sand, loess, colluvium, and glacial till!
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| Gopher Soil Judging - Contest Ready! L-R: Matt Bluhm, Morgan Fabian, Gabe Benitez, Autumn Boxum, Geneva Nunes, Harley Braun, Devon Brodie, Will Effertz. |
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| Contest Site east of Norfolk, NE |
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| Gabe Benitez ponders soil texture as he looks out across the landscape. |
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| Autumn Boxum and Geneva Nunes work on the pit face with other 4-year contestants. |
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| Harley Braun and Will Effertz working on texture and color as they wait to rotate back into the pit. |
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| Morgan Fabian settles in to some texture samples |
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| Devon Brodie working on the pit face |
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| Gabe Benitez and Matt Bluhm completing their descriptions on the 3rd contest site. |
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| 2018 UMN NACTA Soil Judging team post-contest: (L-R): Will Effertz, Morgan Fabian, Matt Bluhm, Geneva Nunes, Devon Brodie (Captain), Autumn Boxum, Harley Braun, Nic Jelinski (Coach) |
The team left Nebraska soon after the contest and arrived home safely to Borlaug Hall around 10:30PM on Friday evening. We won't find out the results until the scores and materials are sent to us, but an excellent educational experience was had by all!
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