After only a year’s worth of experience exhibiting cattle, 10-year-old Laurie Morasch showed the big kids how it’s done at the national junior Angus show held July 20.
She had the overall grand champion female, whose red heifer calf was shown separately and won its classes as well.
Morasch has won championships at the 4-H level and at junior Angus events with her home-raised cattle. She gets help from her parents, Clint and Angela Morasch, who run mostly Red Angus near Bassano, Alta.
A quiet, petite girl, Laurie participates fully in the junior programs, where she must show full-sized cattle and compete in grooming, judging, public speaking and marketing programs where designing publicity campaigns is part of the overall competition.
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“I like to win prizes,” she said and admitted her favourite part of the youth program is the marketing side because her ambition is to be an artist.
The showdown event with about 90 children from across Canada held at Spruce Meadows was a dry run for next year’s world Angus forum event.
Spruce Meadows is known as an equestrian centre but it opened its barns and well manicured grounds to cattle.
Morasch is the kind of young person 20-year-old Quinn Hamilton of Innisfail, Alta., sees joining youth events each year.
The youth component has children as young as five and as old as 21 participating in various events, which Hamilton sees as a good link between the adults and youth.
A business major at the University of Calgary, Hamilton combines duties on the ranch with volunteer work with the junior association and showing her own cattle.
“When I was little, I didn’t want to show and I didn’t want the event to happen, but now it’s pretty good,” Hamilton said.
That experience made her a confident young adult who is the incoming president of the Canadian Junior Angus Association, which has a special committee to oversee the world Angus forum being held at Calgary next year.
For the first time a world show will include a youth section with judging events and educational speakers. Planning started last year to line up sponsorships, judges and activities.
