(Seguin) – Guadalupe County Youth Livestock and Homemakers Show participants are again the big winners following what is being recorded as the largest show ever. Announcing the record-breaking year is Megan Reiley, co-secretary of the youth show committee.
“Every year, our goal is to be better than the last year and last year, we came in right at about $1.5 million and so we said all year, ‘we want to be better than that. We want to raise more money.’ As of (Sunday night), we were sitting at about $1.7. We are actually a lot closer to $1.8 million every day. I’m not sure if we are going to hit $1.8 but $1.7 is incredible. We would have been happy with $1.6. We even would have happy with $1.5 but we had a ton of new buyers come out and participate –a lot of our continuous supporters for the past 50 years have come out and continued to support us,” said Reiley.
Reiley says the support being thrown their way by the buyers is what is most impressive.
“Sometimes finding these buyers is difficult and part of that sales committee is trying to find those people who want to support these kids. You know there is sometimes that we might feel a little defeated like we are not going to get there and then every year, we just surprise ourselves and we give all the credit to the incredible buyers. We couldn’t do any of this without them,” said Reiley.
Reiley says support for these kids actually begins before each youth show in January. She says various events throughout the year help make it possible for all kids to benefit.
“A lot of these buyers, they have these big events that when people purchase tickets to these events, when they do the raffle prizes, the dinners – all these things. That money generated from those events goes straight to these kids. I think that’s really important for people to know when they buy tickets to Wade Busby or Ann, Bethany Bertling (And Tristan Gonzalez Foundation) – we have so many buying groups that when you support those groups, not only are you supporting that event, but those events come back and spend that money directly on our kids,” said Reiley.
Reiley says she extends kudos to all buyers including those mom-and-pop businesses who spend anywhere from $50 to $1000.
She is also just thankful for all those who acknowledge the hard work of these kids. She says it allows them to continue to raise more animals and allows the seniors to put those funds toward their college tuition.
At the end of the day, Reiley says it’s making sure that they are raising the most for the kids and providing them with the best shot at their futures.
“The great thing about Guadalupe County is we like to sell 75 percent of our exhibitors so in a class of goats or a class of lambs, 75 percent of that class is going to sell which is incredible. We try and get that number as high as possible so actual sell lots that went through the sale – we were at 406 lots. So, exhibitors that actually went across the auction block was 406,” said Reiley. “Another great thing about Guadalupe County for our exhibitors who may have come and shown a pen of rabbits or a goat and unfortunately didn’t make the auction, we still give them the opportunity to raise money and receive add-ons from some of these buyers. So, they were still able to receive money and get some funds and those non-placing exhibitors really did have a lot of those buyers put money on them,” said Reiley.
This year’s youth show welcomed a total of 518 exhibitors. Many of those youth entered multiple projects. The youth show was held Jan. 17-21 at the Guadalupe County Fairgrounds.