Laine Utter named state FFA officer

MOSES LAKE - Laine Utter said she liked what she saw, when she looked around at the state FFA convention, and wanted to be one of the people running things. At the 2013 convention she reached her goal; Utter is one of the six FFA members selected as state officers.

"I'm the first" from Moses Lake High School, she said.

"I'm still in shock over the fact I even got it," she said. "It's not real yet. It's crazy."

Utter was elected as the reporter, a job which has changed a lot over time. "The reporter pretty much covers the social media pieces," the state FFA's Facebook page and Twitter account, its television production, its print media.

A state officer position is such a big job that Utter will have to defer starting college for a year. In fact, that's one of the requirements, she said.

Utter will be traveling the state, "Three hundred of the 365 days (of her term), pretty much," she said, visiting high schools with FFA chapters, working with FFA members, promoting the organization and agriculture in general. She'll attend the national FFA convention, travel to Washington, D.C. and possibly go abroad.

It all starts in early June. "As soon as I graduate, it's time to go to work," she said.

It took some work to get as far as state office. Laine said she decided when she was a sophomore that she wanted to try for state, "but I knew I would have to (work hard) to get there."

So as a junior she became an officer of the Moses Lake chapter, and was elected to district office as well. She was very active in the chapter, participated at the Grant County Fair, and was elected to state and district offices as a senior, she said.

All of that was the preliminary to the actual election, where 28 people were running for six spots.

Candidates had to fill out a pre-convention application, take an examination during the convention, go through two individual interviews and a group interview.

The evaluators then cut the group to 10, and those finalists made their pitch to the entire convention. The delegates voted, "and they kind of choose your fate from there," Laine said.

It was a demanding process, "but that was the easy part," Laine said. For the next year she'll be publicizing the organization, meeting FFA members, conducting workshops.

She's most looking forward to going to schools and meeting the FFA members, she said. "By far."

Utter said she hopes she can provide some of the same leadership that inspired her when she was new in FFA.

Laine said she plans to follow in her dad's footsteps, and become an agriculture teacher. The training she gets through FFA will help her when she's running her own classroom, she said.

She's looking forward to the next year, she said. "I'm super-excited. I've been waiting for this forever. I'm ready."