Oct. 1 2013 08:06 AM

    Geographic neighbors pack a one-two punch.

    One point. That's all it takes. And last night, at the National 4-H Dairy Judging Contest, that's all it took for first-place Maryland to best their neighbors to the north in second place . . . Pennsylvania.

    Maryland 4-H team

    With a one point lead, the Maryland team claimed victory. (L to R): coach Anne Davis, Ian Doody, Julia Doody, Cassidy Schirmer, Courtney Hoff, and coach Kiera Finucane.

    This year, Maryland's team totaled 2,061 points. In breed placings, the widest spread amongst the top 10 individuals was 10 points in the Holstein breed. The narrowest, in the Ayrshire and Brown Swiss breeds, was a two-point spread. The top individuals and teams in each breed can be found on our Facebook page .

    4-H top individual With a score of 711, Wisconsin's Trent Dado topped the contest individually. Two individuals from the Maryland team placed in the top 25. Maryland's Julia Doody was one point behind Dado.

    Emily Shaw, Pennsylvania; Tyler Goodlett, Kentucky; and Travis Troendle, Minnesota, were third through fifth, respectively.

    These were also members of this year's top five teams: Maryland, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Kentucky.

    Siblings, better yet twins, showed that talking is in their genes. Julia Doody and her brother, Ian, topped the individual reasons line up with scores of 236 and 232. To make the story even more interesting, coach Anne Davis was on the 1979 4-H team with the Doody's father, John, and her twin brother, Tom Powel. Anne's daughter, Elizabeth, was on the Virginia Tech team that won this year's collegiate contest.

    Rounding out the top five in reasons were Emily Shaw, Pennsylvania; Jay Luoma, Michigan; and Trent Dado, Wisconsin.

    With a 688 the Maryland team also took the team reasons trophy. They were followed by Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

    Twenty-six teams and 101 individuals competed in the National 4-H Dairy Judging Contest.

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    Amanda blog footer

    The author is an associate editor and an animal science graduate of Cornell University. Smith covers feeding, milk quality and heads up the World Dairy Expo Supplement. She grew up on a Medina, N.Y., dairy, and interned at a 1,700-cow western New York dairy, a large New York calf and heifer farm, and studied in New Zealand for one semester.

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