When it comes to living by FFA’s motto – “Learning to Do, Doing to Learn, Earning to Live, Living to Serve” – few do it better than Lometa High School senior Selie Hodge.
For a decade, the two-year FFA chapter president has been a constant figure in the show ring at the Lampasas County Youth Livestock Show and across the state. Also, Hodge participates in several FFA speaking, career and leadership events.
Earlier in her high school career, she made the decision to devote all her time and energy to FFA.
“I decided to quit all of my sports and pretty much most of my extracurricular [activities] to focus on FFA,” Hodge said. “This is all that I do.”
She started showing goats in third grade before shifting to cattle with the help of her ag teacher, Dusty Mahan. Since then, Hodge has grown in all aspects of caring for her show cattle.
“I really struggled with hair care on cattle when I first started,” Hodge said. “It is so important. You want that really long hair, and even if you are showing a shorter-haired breed of cattle, you are still trying to grow as much hair as possible. Hair training is incredibly important for them, and now it is kind of a breeze to do it.”
This year, Hodge showed the grand champion market steer at the county livestock show. Hodge labeled great showmanship as one of her keys to success in the show ring.
“It matters tremendously,” she said. “They say a 50-cent showman can make a $30,000 calf nothing, but a good showman can make a 50-cent calf into a $30,000 calf. It seems a little exaggerated, but truly, your showmanship determines if your calf structure looks correct.”
Along with showing animals, Hodge also has competed in ag mechanics competitions. As a sophomore, she crafted a dining table for her parents before developing a live-edge coffee table.
This year, Hodge built a shelf to hold the 16 belt buckles she has acquired from various ag mechanic competitions to goat and cattle shows in which she exhibited winning entries.
Despite her success -- and likely having achieved the 10,000-hour mark to be an expert -- Hodge remains humble.
“I feel like I definitely haven’t mastered the sport, but you definitely learn so much,” she said. “Mr. Mahan has been doing it for 50some odd years, and he is still learning stuff because the industry grows so much.”
Hodge’s success has been exclusive to Lampasas County. Last year, she printed at the San Antonio Livestock Show & Rodeo with the champion lightweight Angus that earned her around $6,000. This year, she plans to compete once again in the Alamo City and in Houston.
Hodge admitted that major shows bring challenging competition.
“It is crazy,” she said. “You might get in the room with 70 head of cattle, and they will pull you, and they may pull 17 calves, and that is what is going to be shown in the next set of judging. If you make it into that set, you are
fighting for those placing spots. In Fort Worth they sell 10, but in San Antonio they sold the top two.”
After 10 years of success in livestock shows, Hodge has decided to pass down her knowledge. She is mentoring young exhibitors in Lampasas and several other counties. Already, her young apprentices are proving their worth.
“At the Lampasas show, I had a second-grader and she is someone I am mentoring, and she won pee-wee showmanship,” Hodge said. “It was a good experience.”
Outside of the show ring, Hodge has competed in other FFA events like quiz, creed speaking, radio broadcasting, public speaking competitions and four years of livestock judging. For her team’s eight-minute radio broadcasting, Hodge’s group focused on growing concerns about the re-emergence of the deadly New World screwworm.
Last year, Hodge finished fourth at area for her speaking development event focusing on ag communications. This year, she plans to focus on animal science, with the district competition looming on the horizon.
Depending on the time of year, sometimes the senior’s heavy load of FFA activities has gotten the best of her, she said.
“Because they are in different seasons, it depends on the season. Right now, it feels like a lot because you have the major shows and all the other competitions,” Hodge said. “I have missed two weeks of [school in] February.”
Hodge said her drive to push herself each day wouldn’t have been possible without her FFA adviser. She said Mahan’s impact has been “tremendous.”
“I wouldn’t be doing any of it if wasn’t for Mr. Mahan,” she said. “When I switched into cattle, that brought me into the gear of ‘want to pursue FFA more.’ ” After graduation this May, Hodge plans to attend Tarleton State University to pursue a career as a ruminant nutritionist and, of course, focus on cattle.