New leaders are hard at work preparing for a busy year ahead.

These seven young leaders were elected to serve on the state FFA officer team during last week's state convention.

The officers will represent North Dakota at the national FFA convention in October.

Throughout the year the team will travel the state hosting conferences and visiting local FFA chapters.

(Andy Hamel / Secretary) "Our focus is to bring the excitement. We just want to get everyone pumped about it, because state convention and anything we go to is alway really fun. We just want to bring the excitement back and get everyone as energized as we are about it."

Lucas Schmaltz is from Rugby.

He's serving as the Northeast Region Vice-President. Schmaltz says having someone from his area on the officer team hasn't happened in a long time.

(Lucas Schmaltz / NE Region VP) "I think my biggest inspiration as far as running for state office was I think that the kids from our region really feel that they don't have a voice in our organization and I really wanted to give them that voice and be a part of it. We have not had an officer run from our region for six years."


Currently there are about 44-hundred FFA members in the state. watch the video | save this article / add to your favorites list