Two Coffee High School graduates, Anna Scott and Anna Unger, were recently named champions of the National High Plains Intercollegiate Meat Judging Contest as a coach and team members of the University of Georgia’s team.
The contest was held in Friona, Texas, on October 30, with over 120 students competing in two divisions. Following the day-long event, winners of each category were announced during a banquet hosted at the Hereford Civic Center.
The UGA team, the Meat Dawgs, won the National Champion A Division Team, and were named “High Teams” in champion team overall classes of overall beef, and beef grading, and took home 2nd in high team beef judging, 3rd in high team questions, and 4th in high team pork judging. Four students on the team also received individual awards, including Willacoochee native and CHS graduate Anna Unger.
Unger was named second in Team All-American, 7th High Individual Overall, and 2nd in High Individual Beef Grading. She is a 4th-year Animal Science major who plans to attend the UGA College of Veterinary Medicine, where she will specialize in food animal medicine.
Anna Scott, a native of Coffee County who was hired as a UGA grad student in 2020 to assist in bringing back the meat judging program, led the team, which had been absent for ten years. She was also on the Texas Tech meats team in 2019, which won the national and international contests that year.
Scott helped develop the team last fall of 2021, to offer students an experimental learning opportunity by learning about the food animal industry and networking with professionals across the country.
The Meat Dawgs competed in their first event in January, where they won a team championship and several other individual awards. Each season runs from January through November. The recent championship wrapped up their season, with the team already preparing for next year’s events.
After the awards were announced, Scott shared, “Go Dawgs! I couldn’t be more proud of this team and its accomplishments over the last ten months. It’s been a heck of a run with a storybook ending.”