By Jim Massey
Freelance writer
Four young women from Polk County discovered in November that hard work and dedication can be the difference when seeking the ultimate prize.
The four high school juniors from Amery took their dairy knowledge all the way to a national title in the National 4-H Dairy Quiz Bowl competition in Louisville, Ky. The team of Kallie Andersen, Evelyn Braaten, Suki Gatica and Darby Trent won the senior division of the Wisconsin 4-H Dairy Quiz Bowl Contest in February of 2024 to earn the opportunity to compete for the top prize at the national contest in November.
Polk County 4-H Dairy Quiz Bowl Team
The team was coached by Gwen Dado and Patti Hurtgen.
The 4-H dairy quiz bowl competition was resurrected at the state level about three years ago with the help of Jill Jorgensen, Wisconsin youth development 4-H animal science and agriculture outreach specialist, and Emily Stumpf, a College of Agricultural and Life Sciences student who works as the 4-H agriculture and animal science student support staff.
The dairy quiz bowl is one of about 20 different 4-H animal science contests conducted in Wisconsin each year. In addition to quiz bowl there are dairy judging, livestock judging, livestock quiz bowl, meat judging, horse judging, poultry quiz bowl teams and many more.
The Polk County team worked together for about 2-1/2 years before reaching their goal of the national championship.
“They’re pretty amazing because all four young women are non-farm youth,” Dado says. “They show dairy managerial dairy animals through our farm (Four Hands Holsteins of Amery). I coached them in FFA quiz bowl, which is how all of this started. From there they decided to try dairy judging and dairy quiz bowl, so for them to win at the national level, it’s pretty amazing.”
To gain the knowledge they needed to compete at the state and national levels, the team practiced every Sunday morning from 6:30 to 8:30.
“Unless they were sick, they were there, every Sunday morning for 2-1/2 years,” Dado says. “Talk about dedication.”
The team was required to know a little bit about everything associated with the dairy industry, Dado says, from conformation of the cow to reproduction, finances, nutrition, animal welfare, milk production, animal health and more.
“It’s different when you’re working with a young team that is not from a farm,” Dado says. “When my children were involved with quiz bowl, things happening in the dairy industry were dinner-time conversation. For these young women, that didn’t happen. What they learned, they learned at practice or on their own.”
Dado says she and Hurtgen coach the team because they enjoy giving back to an industry that has been important to them for so many years. Hurtgen is online media manager for Hoard’s Dairyman.
“To win a national championship and see the tears of joy and excitement of what they were able to accomplish because of the dedication they had through studying, you can’t put words to the feelings you have of how proud you are of those young women,” Dado says.
Gatica says the reason the team was successful because it was so well-balanced.
“In order to be balanced we each needed to put in our own effort and time,” she says. “My motivation was a sense of responsibility I had to my teammates and coaches. Letting them down was the last thing I ever wanted to do. The time and effort my coaches put into me made me believe in myself even when I was overwhelmed by how much I still needed to learn before the competition.”
Trent says she simply “loves being on the buzzer,” and the excitement that comes with the competition.
“Getting up early (for practice) can be hard, but getting to learn questions about a subject I’m really passionate about while doing so with people I love pushed me to keep going,” she says. “The feeling of winning an event that you’ve spent so long practicing for is an indescribable feeling.”
Braaten says the team competed at the Wisconsin Junior Holstein Association contest prior to the nationals, and they took that loss personally and were more determined to win at the national contest.
“We understood that winning nationals was another boost for our future, as Darby, Kallie and Suki want to pursue dairy science careers and I have been inspired to look into an agriculture career,” Braaten says. “I think we knew if we studied as much as we did and still didn’t win, we could handle that in opposition to going in unprepared and not winning. It was encouragement, support and time that Gwen and Patti brought to the team that continued to motivate us to study even when we didn’t want to.”
Stumpf was asked to take on resurrecting the quiz bowl program because of her background in dairy bowl competition as a member of the Junior Holstein Association.
“I had that core base of how to do it,” she says. “A lot of people wanted to bring it back.”
The program was stagnant from 2020 until it was resurrected in 2023.
Stumpf says it was gratifying to see the Polk County team succeed after she had helped to bring the quiz bowl back from the dead.
“It was very nice to see them succeed at the national contest,” she says.
Jorgensen says the quiz bowl program wouldn’t have been brought back if not for the help of Stumpf.
She says the quiz bowl program gives the young people who are involved an excellent knowledge base for their future careers.
“I think of these young people moving into the next phases of their lives, how much they’ve learned and grown, how they’ve worked as a team and how they’ve built those skills to be part of a team,” Jorgensen says. “They are a part of something bigger than them as an individual.”
Jorgensen says 4-H provides a connection for young people to the university, so they have an opportunity to see the university “from a lens that can be part of their life.”
“It’s the embodiment of the Wisconsin Idea,” she says.
Dado says her family has strong ties with the Department of Animal and Dairy Sciences, as her husband, Rick, earned a master’s degree from the department while two of their daughters were also ADS graduates. The Dado family milks about 450 cows on its Polk County dairy farm.
Even though members of the Polk County team are only high school juniors, making the national competition prohibits them from competing in 4-H dairy quiz bowl again.