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2008 Youth Tour winner finds Washington trip incredible
Lucas Schmaltz has a lot going for himself. He owns 25 percent of a beef cattle herd and is involved fulltime in his family’s organic beef production operation and organic farm. He is president of the student body at Rugby High School and participates in a whole array of other high school activities.
But, when it came time to sit down last winter and write an essay that would give him a shot at a free trip to Washington D.C., Lucas wasn’t too busy. He submitted his essay in December, was declared a winner in February, and traveled to Washington in June. He says writing a Northern Plains Youth Tour essay was the best possible use of his time.
"The overall experience of going to Washington with the youth tour group was amazing," he says. "The friendships I gained, the overall experience, it was just so much fun. It was the greatest week. I would recommend that anybody who is eligible try for this."
What does it take to be eligible to win the Northern Plains Youth Tour contest? Entrants must be juniors or seniors in high school. They must write an essay, double-spaced and no more than two pages long, on a specific topic .
Lucas said it didn’t take him long to write his essay, not when he looks back and considers all he has gleaned as a result. "When I set out for Washington, I didn’t think I would know anyone else. When I met up with the rest of our group, which included kids from Montana, Idaho, and North Dakota, I found I did recognize a few faces," he says. "But by the time we got to Washington, by the end of the plane ride, I knew everybody."
Not only did Lucas get to know many of the students that attended the 2008 Electric Cooperative Youth Tour, but he became good friends with many. "I talk to them all the time; they are people I won’t forget," he says. "In fact, a guy from Watford City and I became friends and have requested each other as roommates at NDSU this fall."
Learning, sightseeing, good times
Some 40,000 students from across the United States participate in the Electric Youth Tour. Lucas says the 2008 event kicked off in grand style, with a moonlit cruise on the Potomac River onboard a ship. "Two of the ship’s three stories had dances, with 500 kids from five states per ship," he says. "And that was the beginning of the week. We toured every national monument in Washington, got to see the Holocaust Museum, changing of the guard at Arlington, the Silent Drill at the Iwo Jima monument, a couple of the Smithsonian museums, the National Archives, the Supreme Court. The list goes on and on; it was amazing."
Before the trip was over, Lucas and his group had learned about electric cooperatives and visited with both of North Dakota’s senators in Washington. "It was really interesting to me, because that very day, they were voting on the farm bill," he explains. "And later, when I got home, it happened that Senator Dorgan was hosting a Farm Forum right down the road from our farm, at the neighbors’. I felt like I had such a better idea of what his role is, what the issues are, after being in Washington."
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For more information about the Electric Youth Tour, visit http://www.youthtour.coop or
