El Capitan High FFA student brings home one of the top awards from California State Fair

Time management is a skill Mady Dietz has mastered at an early age.

The soon-to-be El Capitan High School junior somehow balances her time as a four-sport athlete with raising and showing animals as a Future Farmers of America member.

Fitting basketball, golf, flag football and track into her schedule around bottle-feeding goats and sheep isn’t easy. Dietz, 16, has found a way to do it and still maintain a 4.3 GPA.

“It gets really tough,” Dietz said. “You learn to set priorities. It’s a lot of early mornings and late nights.”

When you perform like Dietz did at the California State Fair, it’s makes all those long hours worth it.

Dietz was named the 2024 Supreme Champion Challenge Exhibitor, Champion Large Animal Exhibitor and Champion Sheep Exhibitor, bringing home more than $3,000 in prize money.

Dietz competed against approximately 200 other competitors from across the state in earning the supreme champion title, which is awarded based on the participant’s knowledge and skills of their project and related industry.

Competitors are evaluated for their knowledge and skill in animal care, handling, health, nutrition, reproduction and genetics, show preparation, transportation and ethics awareness, marketing and food safety, animal identification and industry technologies.

The participants took written and oral tests.

“I studied a lot so I felt I was prepared for the questions they asked,” Dietz said. “I was pretty confident with my answers.”

Dietz was ecstatic after winning.

“I was super happy,” she said. “It’s a huge accomplishment and it’s something nobody in my family had done before, which is super exciting.”

Dietz wasn’t the only local FFA member to do well in Sacramento. Merced County high schools feature some of the top FFA programs in the state and that was on display with Atwater High’s Kayleigh Trindade also winning Supreme Champion Market Barrow and Golden Valley High’s Keira Koehn being named the Reserve Champion Dorset Ewe.

Dietz has grown up around animals her whole life and started showing animals at 9 years old.

“It’s always been apart of my family,” Dietz said. “For four generations my family has been farmers. My great grandma raised animals and it’s been passed on through the years.”

Dietz says she loves forming bonds with each animal she raises, getting to know their distinct personality.

She says she spends about two hours every day tending to her sheep and goats.

She still finds time to excel in sports. Dietz was an all-Central California Conference selection in basketball, flag football, golf and set a school record in her first season running track.

Dietz says the main similarity between raising animals and excelling in sports is the hard work it requires to do both.

“Both require a lot of hard work,” she said. “You have to put in the hours, they require discipline and then when you do all the stuff that you need to do both can be very rewarding.”