Valley students present goats at Rio Grande Valley Livestock Show

MERCEDES — The winning of something is not always the winning itself but the journey toward that higher goal.

Colton Carrillo knows that very well.

This was the first year that 10-year-old Colton from Rio Hondo had participated in the Rio Grande Valley Livestock Show. His market goat had taken eighth place in his class.

“I am going to do it next year,” said Colton with stern conviction, his face showing confidence and conviction.

It was the second day of the 85th Annual Rio Grande Valley Livestock Show and Rodeo. Students had come in from cities and towns throughout the Valley and even outside the Valley to show their hogs, their lambs, their heifers, their horticulture projects and their shop projects and their rabbits.

The students were bring in their Brahman heifers and their Simbrah heifers and their hogs in preparation of their shows later this week. On Tuesday, however, they lead their goats about the showgrounds and down the alleys past the stalls where students and parents prepared their projects.

In one of the stalls a man towered over this daughter’s goat and held the goat’s head sternly while the goat drank water from a bottle.

“It’s to keep them hydrated,” said Edward Vela, whose daughter Arely Vela, 16, would soon walk the goat “Chunky Cho” into the arena.

“This is my first year doing this,” said Arely, a junior at the Science Academy of South Texas ISD.

“I don’t know a lot,” she continued. “We have been walking him a lot with the halter and collar.”

In the arena there was the metallic clashing of the rails from the struggling of livestock, and there was the bleating and a sort of yodeling from the animals and people speaking. A young girl on the bottom bleacher looked at her phone and a teenage boy walked by with a half-devoured turkey leg.

“Second call for Class One!” said a woman over a speaker, and the judges entered the arena. A teenage boys from Roma played the “National Anthem” with a trumpet. And the people stood for the playing of the anthem and they had their hands over their hearts.

And now the students lead their goats into the arena for the judges and and applause rise from the bleachers as Ximena Rodriguez, 16, took the blue ribbon for Class One.

“I feel like very excited because I worked so hard for this,” she said. “I think it paid off.”

It certainly did pay off again, when she took the blue ribbon also for her division.

And it paid for Colton too, gaining confidence and recognition and experience in his first year of many years in the livestock show.

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