Schimelpfening promotes Texas Brigades – Pleasanton Express
Sadie Schimelpfening attended the Ranch Brigade at Warren Ranch in Santa Anna where she was a cadet. JESSICA SCHIMELPFENING | COURTESY PHOTO
Texas Brigades is a non-profit organization that specializes in youth education and leadership skills in land stewardship, conservation, fisheries and wildlife. Their mission is to support natural resources through youth conservation ambassadors.
Texas Brigades has six summer camps for ages 13-17. Each camp lasts five days and must have a completed application. Applicants must also write two essays. Essays for cadets, who go to camp for the first time for each brigade, must answer various questions about the environment, natural resources and other similar topics. Brigade members returning a second time must return to leadership positions as assistant leaders. They must answer essay questions about how they would use their leadership skills.
Sadie Schimelpfening, a freshman at Pleasanton High School, started FFA when she was 13 years old and in eighth grade. She has completed two Brigade camps. She participated in the Bass Brigade and the Ranch Brigade at Warren Ranch in Santa Anna. “These camps that I went to are mostly about leadership and team building and getting you out of your comfort zone,” Schimelpfening said. The rookie was an assistant leader in the Bass Brigade and a cadet in the Ranch Brigade.
Schimelpfening as she was learning how to properly administer a shot to a plastic cow. JESSICA SCHIMELPFENING | COURTESY PHOTO
Each participant can complete a book of achievements to return to leadership roles. It’s a way to record community service and give presentations promoting conservation and brigade camps by making a slideshow of their accomplishments and photos. Each achievement book is submitted and graded. The four Brigade applicants are then asked to return as leaders. Sadie has made presentations throughout the community. She will also have a booth set up at the San Antonio Livestock Show to promote Texas Brigade camps.
When Sadie participated in Ranch Brigade, she had contests and fun ways to learn various management and farming skills, including neutering, digging postholes, and administering medicine. Sadie said, “leadership [skills] coming from assistant managers and leading your team, trying to keep them on track and trying to get them to do certain things and you’re teaching them how to do things.”
Each brigade camp has a wide variety of activities and practical skills for participants to learn. Schimelpfening also said each camp has participants from all over the state and one was from Oklahoma.
Schimelpfening would like to thank the local businesses in the Atascosa County community that have sponsored her camp tuition including the Atascosa Farm Bureau, Atascosa County USDA Soil and Water
Texas Farm Credit and Conservation District.
If you would like to learn more about the various camps, visit https:// texasbrigades.org. If you would like your child to participate, the deadline to submit an application is March 15, 2023.
