The long-standing tradition of sending participants to the national FFA Convention will continue next week for Cassopolis High School.

Cassopolis won a pair of state championships at the 85th annual Michigan convention March 6-8.

Those teams, along with senior Cameron Hayden, will compete at the national convention in Louisville, Ky. Oct. 30-Nov. 2.

Cassopolis’ Greenhand Conduct of Meetings team, which consists of Dylan Armstrong, Daniel Duebner, Emily Dussel, Casey Pflug, Austin Green, Jackie Cogdell-Kelly, Austin Voss, Monica Ward and Jurnee Johnson will compete prior to the official beginning of the national conference.

Greenhand hasn’t been officially recognized at the national level yet, but they will compete against teams from around the country.

This is the first year for the Greenhand competition.

Cassopolis also advanced its Parliamentary Procedures team, which consists of Hayden, Ele Hein, Courtney Kuemin, Jacob Roth, Stephen Walker and Emily Waldschmidt.

Hayden will compete in the National FFA Agriscience Fair. He is a finalist in the Animal Systems category in the 10-12 Division.

Hayden was required to conduct a specific research project focused on agriscience or food science industries.

“The Greenhand team will be doing an introductory course into parliamentary procedure and how to run an effective business meeting,” Hayden said. “So they will be going down Monday and Tuesday.”

“They will be competing on Tuesday,” FFA Advisor Carrie George added. “It is called the Novice Parliamentary Procedure Competition and they are trying to get it to be a part of the national FFA Convention, but it takes a few years. They have to get sponsorships and prove that it is a worthy contest. It is still in that trial phase. So they will compete Tuesday, which is actually the day before convention starts.

“The Parliamentary Procedures Team that is one of the national career development events, so they will compete Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at the national convention.”

Hayden will compete individually on Wednesday.

“You set up your display board in the morning and all your display aspects,” Hayden said. “Then you go through an interview process that I think is around 15 minutes long. First you tell the judges what you want to share with them about the experimental design of the project. You give them a little background. Then you have five to 10 minutes of answering questions for clarification.”

Cassopolis has the only Cass County FFA chapter and is one of the five largest in the state of Michigan with 125 members. Its members come from both Cass and Berrien counties.