2019 Livestock Judging Team Makes History

The last time the Chico State Livestock Judging Team placed in the top five at the North American International Livestock Exposition (NAILE) in Louisville, Kentucky, the year was 1997, and Clay Carlson was on the team.

“We were a pretty good team. We were a competitive group, and we really pushed each other. We had some really smart kids, not including me,” Carlson chuckled modestly.

The 1997 team, coached by Dave Daley, placed 5th at the contest, which is considered the national finals of collegiate livestock judging. It was a remarkable accomplishment.

Twenty-two years later in 2019, the Chico State Livestock Judging Team finally cracked the top five once again, this time with a 3rd place finish and with Carlson at the helm as coach. The team was comprised of Kylie Burriss, Mikayla Duchi, Nathan Johnson, Madison Morgan, Noa Taipin, and Jared Wolf. Kelley Duggan, Samantha Bright, and Megan Rivera also competed throughout the season and contributed points to the team’s successful run, which included 2nd at the Arizona National Livestock Show, 5th at the Houston Livestock Show, 1st at the Western Fall Classic in Medford, Oregon, and 8th at both the National Barrow Show in Austin, Minnesota, and the American Royal in Kansas City, Missouri.

Among the trophies the team accumulated on their way to their 3rd place NAILE finish was 2nd high team in cattle, 2nd high team in performance cattle, 2nd high team in overall performance and 4th high team in sheep and goats. Nathan Johnson placed 7th high individual in cattle. And while each member of the team had great days throughout the year, Mikayla Duchi was the star of the team at NAILE. She placed 7th high overall, 6th high in reasons, and 4th high in sheep and goats. Duchi also won a $500 scholarship from Rodeo Austin as one of the top three women in the contest.

Having judged competitively since 8th grade, Duchi said the moment was very meaningful.

“Livestock judging has dictated my life, including where I chose to go to college and what I want to do with my career,” Duchi said. “When I heard my name called, I started crying. That was the biggest achievement I’ve had so far in my life.”

Going into the 2019 competitive year, after 20 years of coaching, Carlson had a feeling this team was special. Five of the students had judged together at Linn-Benton Community College in Albany, Oregon. Another had competed at San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton.

“I knew they were going to be good. They came to me pretty good. Then we had some other kids who might not have had the judging experience, but they were very intelligent and competitive people as well. I knew those kids were hungry. And I knew they wanted to prove to themselves,” Carlson said.

Carlson had coached talented, smart, competitive teams before. But it takes a rare combination of livestock evaluation, communication skills, competitive drive, and plain old luck to beat livestock judging powerhouses like Texas A&M and Texas Tech.  

“The stars kind of aligned,” he said. “They worked as hard as I've ever had a team work. They did everything I asked them to do, and it just so happened that the day when it meant everything, when it was the most important day, they put as many things together as they could.”

In an event that combines the ability to evaluate and place various livestock species with the communication skills of being able to verbally justify the placing, Carlson knew that the team’s strength lie in its ability to place the animals correctly one through four.

“I squeezed as much out of them in (oral) reasons as I possibly could, but I knew we couldn’t out-talk some of the other teams like Kansas State (who placed 2nd). Our team’s strength was in marking cards. These kids see livestock very well,” Carlson said.

Duchi said the ability to accurately judge a class was something Carlson really emphasized. 

“In terms of evaluating animals and teaching kids how to evaluate animals, Clay is phenomenal,” Duchi said. “He taught us not to get distracted by any of the weird trends happening in industry, but just to stick to the basics. I don’t think anything we accomplished this year would have been possible if we had anyone other than Clay coaching us.”

The Livestock Judging Team competes every other year, so 2020 has been a rebuilding year for the team. And while the 2019 team left a remarkable impact on the program, Carlson knows that every team is different, and as long as they show up ready to work, he will work even harder to get them ready for the big stage.

“This next team doesn’t have the same level of experience as 2019’s, and the circumstances with COVID-19 are really weird because we can’t travel to practice this fall,” Carlson said. “We’ll see what we end up with.”

No matter the potential of any given team, Carlson sets out with the mindset that they are going to make it into the top five at a national competition.

“I might have to be a little more creative and see if I can squeeze every last ounce of sweat out of them trying to get that done,” he said.

That competitive spirit is what drew Carlson to livestock judging in the first place. The former high school and college basketball player wasn’t even supposed to be on that 1997 judging team. He was getting ready to graduate in the fall of 1996, but Daley invited him to take the livestock evaluation class that semester, and he discovered he was pretty good at it.

“After I was done playing basketball, I found out I still had a competitive itch to scratch. I decided to stick around and compete on the 1997 [judging] team,” he recalled.

Although livestock judging was completely different than the athletic sports he had grown up with, he was drawn to the mental test. Tall, short, athletic or not, none of the physical aspects mattered, he said. Livestock judging was a new challenge. It was fun. He enjoyed it.

After graduation, Carlson attended graduate school at the University of Arizona, where he was hired to rebuild the livestock judging team. It was there that he met his wife, Rhiannon, and in 2001 the couple returned to Northern California, where Clay took over the role of Chico State Livestock Judging coach from his mentor, Dave Daley. Since then he’s coached 11 teams, traveled hundreds of thousands of miles, and looked at more cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, and horses than he can begin to count. It’s that chance to see the country and tour livestock operations in nearly every state that he views as his gift from livestock judging.

Plus, that competitive itch just won’t go away.