Banner takes 34th, Kimball 44th at state range judging

Banner County finished 34th and Kimball took 44th at the state range judging competition held last week in Scottsbluff.

The Banner County team consisted of Savannah Jordan, Jacque Stauffer, Bailee Underhill and Sierra Flores.

Jordan led Banner with 384 individual points in the competition. Stauffer had 346, Underhill scored 339 and Flores had 335.

The top three scores count as the team score, and Banner totalled 1,069 as a team.

Kimball's team consisted of Joel Evertson, Zach Wagner, Heidi Clark and Jordan Cluff.

Evertson had a team-high 389 points to lead Kimball. Wagner scored 232 points, Clark had 205 points and Cluff scored 124 points.

The top three scores count as a team scores, and Kimball scored 826 as a team.

Imperial won the state title with 1,510 points. Loup County (1,488) finished second, followed by West Holt (1,470), West Holt (1,442) and Palmer (1,431).

Range management is an important way of life in Nebraska. While crops are easy to pick out with their perfect rows of corn and wheat, range land is not as easy to define and covers a little over 50 percent of the state. During range judging students have the opportunity to identify up to 24 different plants and determine several characteristics of each plant such as origin (native or introduced), and life span (annual, biennial, perennial). Over the course of eight judging stations, four of which are plant stations, students also judged three range sites and a range map.