Editorial: Round of applause

Published 12:00 pm Friday, November 15, 2019

The Tifton Gazette offers a round of applause for individuals and organizations doing good things in our community.

Tift County Blue Devils and Tiftarea Academy Panthers football teams

As the regular football season comes to an end, we want to recognize our football teams.

The Tift County Blue Devils football season came to an end this last Friday.

Tift, needing a win over Camden County to advance to the state Class AAAAAAA state tournament, had pulled to within three points of the Wildcats in the fourth quarter, but ultimately fell 30-20.

They end the season 3-7.

The Tiftarea Academy Panthers ended their regular season last Friday at 6-3.

Tiftarea will travel to Bulloch Academy today for the first round of the state tournament.

Veterans and Veterans Day organizers

Tift County celebrated veterans on Monday, Nov. 11.

The Tifton Veterans Museum held a ribbon cutting at 9 a.m. at the museum, located at 120 South Tift Avenue.

The museum, which holds memorabilia from most of the military conflicts local soldiers have served in, also has a “Wall of Heroes,” which showcases photos of local veterans.

Organizers are encouraging everyone to bring in more photos of local veterans as well as Korean War memorabilia.

Tift County schools held programs honoring veterans at the school.

The annual Veterans Day Program was held at Veteran’s Park in downtown Tifton at 11 a.m.

We are grateful to our veterans and we also thank event organizers for putting these programs together.

Farm Day volunteers

The 16th Annual Children’s Farm Day was held Friday, Nov. 8 at the school farm.

Farm Day is an event driven and taught by students. Students from both the middle and high schools come up with the fundraisers for the event, put the exhibits together, staff the stations and teach approximately 550 third graders at the different stations.

The stations were staffed by students from Tift County High School, who worked to learn the material so they would know it well enough to teach it.

As Brittaney Schwing, an agriculture education teacher and Future Farmers of America teacher at Tift County High School, pointed out, one of the goals of Farm Day is to teach the children where their food, clothes and materials to build their homes comes from.

“We recognize that these third graders are going to be the leaders in our community and our state,” she said. “Agriculture is our number one industry, so we want them to have the education they need to successfully run Tift County and the State of Georgia. We want them to be successful in their careers. We want them to graduate from high school and we know that if we can get them the education they need now they’ll be more likely to do that later on.”