The annual 4H Achievement Awards were held on Thursday, June 6Â at the Nationwide &Â Ohio Farm Bureau 4-H Center in Columbus. This event was hosted by the Ohio 4-H Foundation which recognized 29 youth who received this year’s Achievement Award in their project area. Among those honored was Muskingum County’s Hayden Weck.
Weck received the Food and Nutrition Achievement Award. He has entered to be considered for the award in the past, but this was his first time being selected. Although, he has been recognized for several other types of awards through the years. The process to be considered for an achievement award involves completing projects, writing an essay, submitting photos, and sharing a history of his 4-H career, among other requirements. It is quite an honor as only a limited amount of people are chosen every year.
After hearing that he had been selected he was shocked. Weck explained, “I wasn’t expecting to win, to be honest, because I have tried before and I was just like well, I will try again, we were just in disbelief I guess.”
He was allowed to take a small number of guests but immediately wanted to ask 4-H volunteer of 70 years, Dorothy Montgomery, to accompany him.
Weck is thankful for all who have helped him along the way.
“I want to thank Jamie McConnell because she is the one that nominated me, and for all of her work at the 4-H extension office,” said Weck. “I want to thank my sponsor Betsy Moore, I want to thank my Mom (Adeline Weck), and Hannah Fasilis for helping me, and all of my advisors in 4-H and the judges, and all of the volunteers in Muskingum County”
Weck has been a member of 4-H since Kindergarten. He is in the Adamsville Renegades 4-H Club and has been since he was a Cloverbud. During those almost 12 years he learned so many new skills and life lessons including time management.
“I feel that time management, trying to stay organized with all of the projects, with still projects which I do a lot of, you need to focus on those at a certain time, and when you take as many as I do you need to manage that time in between each project,” he explained.
Besides 4-H Weck keeps his schedule full by being a member of the Tri-Valley Symphonic Band, Tri-Valley Drama Club, A2J Crew Dance Kompany and their competition team, Muskingum County Junior Leaders, and serves as a 4-H Ambassador, an Eagle Scout (Pack 122), is on the Jr. Fair Board, and is a participant at State Leadership Camp and Citizenship Washington Focus.
He takes a variety of still projects and has won many awards at the Ohio State Fair. He also shows his pygmy and dairy goats. Some of his still projects included Your Thoughts Matter (mental health project), Magic of Electricity level one (making circuits, switches, etc – STEM), and Assisting Animals in Action.
Weck explained his project title Cooking on Your Own, “I made a roast in the oven, I had to make my entire dinner complete with a main dish, a side dish, and a dessert, I made hand-breaded chicken, with roasted potatoes, with green beans, for the side I made a fruit salad, and for dessert, I made banana oatmeal cookies. – In the more advanced levels there are about seven chapters and in each chapter, there were two recipes so I made 14 recipes.”
“4-H is a lot of work, it is a lot of learning, but it is also a lot of fun, you can learn and do basically anything that you are interested in, there are about 200 or more projects and if it is not a project, you can make your own project. You can learn stuff that you can’t do in school, it’s a lot of hands-on activities and a lot of fun like that,” Weck said.
He is trying out for Muskingum County Fair King, and Senior Goat Ambassador this year. Since he is going into his senior year at Tri-Valley High School, college is also on his mind.
“After graduation, I hope to go into Muskingum University and be a part of their undergrad biology, because I want to be a large and small animal vet – The end goal is to get into OSU in their vet program,” he stated.
Ohio 4-H is the youth development program of Ohio State University Extension, the outreach arm of the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences. To learn more about how you can get involved in 4H visit 4-h.org. For more information on the Ohio State University Extension go to https://muskingum.osu.edu.
