At last month’s Wyoming State Fair in Douglas, Powell High School graduate Michael Maddox won the Champion FFA Showmanship award for swine.

“It’s pretty cool. It’s something I’ve always worked toward,” Maddox said of his win with his hog Pebbles.

Bryce Meyer, PHS agricultural teacher and FFA adviser, said the award was an impressive achievement for the 18-year-old. Records of past FFA winners don’t go back too far, Meyer said, but at least in the eight years he’s been at PHS, no one took it home.

“If there’s another one, I don’t know about it,” Meyer said.

He said the showmanship award can be an especially challenging contest due to the subjective nature of the judging. Unlike awards that look at the market quality of the hog, showmanship is more about how well the student shows the animal and how it responds to him or her.

“It’s a reflection of how much training work the student has put into the animal,” Meyer explained. The judge may also ask the handler about the swine industry and aspects of raising the animal.

Meyer said it can take a lot of time and patience for the student to get the animal to respond right and even with a lot of work, the animal might not be entirely predictable.

“Sometimes the animal can have a mind of its own,” Meyer said.

A hog handler is working with an animal that needs to have a good relationship with its owner; it’s not the kind of animal you can really force to your will.

“If you ever tried to manhandle a 250-pound hog, you know it doesn’t go so well,” Meyer said.

The adviser said Maddox’s performance was impressive and showed he really knew how to handle Pebbles well.

Now that he’s graduated from high school, Maddox said he’s done competing in FFA, but he’s going to help his little brother and cousins as they compete.

Maddox isn’t done with swine, though: He raises hogs professionally and will be putting his energies into his business.