One of the biggest events we have at LHS is the Kiss the Pig event. The FFA club has teachers sign up, and students vote with money on which teacher they want to kiss Piper, a well-known pig at LHS form past contests.
“We’ve done Kiss the Pig for five years,” FFA Advisor Jenni Fishburn said. “The first two years were piglets that one of our members, Graci Homburg, had from her 4H pigs, and then Piper started three years ago.”
The event started with FFA members announcing and explaining the contests they have in the cafeteria, those contests being milk chugging, pie eating and whip cream tossing. The winner of the milk chugging contest on Tuesday was senior Samuel Esqueda, who won by 2.05 seconds. Then, for Wednesday, the winner of the pie-eating contest was Mauricio Solis, who won by 30 seconds. Then, finally, the cool whip toss challenge on Thursday was won by Alexander Osorio, the amount of cool whip being a total of six.
Further on in the event, FFA announces the final five teachers who have been picked to kiss the pig: Bryan Looker, Laura Morgan, Tucker McCord, Dave Packard and Rick Bair.
After the announcements of the teachers, the game began. The game has different teams that play farm-related activities. It starts with the other end where one member from each team runs to the other end to hold buckets of weights and then runs back. The next members dress in farm animal inflatables. Two people stand on the left end of the gym. Those who are dressed up have to run down the gym to their other members, who have to chug milk and ride a fake horse to their other teammate, who has to balance an egg on a spoon in their mouth. They have to make it back, and as soon as they do, each class’s respective teacher has to flip a bottle that looks like a feeding bottle for baby animals. If they make it, they win.
“It wasn’t very difficult,” sophomore Cesar Martin-Acosta said. “We would’ve won if it weren’t for Mr. McCord. We were winning, but then Mr. McCord took 34 seconds to land the milk bottle. So, it was fairly easy, and we had strong, dependable people on our team.”
After the game, the FFA announces the final two teachers who have had the most votes from students of the school. Those final two were Looker and Bair. Before they announced the winner of Kiss the Pig, Fishburn made a surprise announcement, saying how Piper was growing old and finally growing a pair of tusks, so to not hurt the teacher from kissing the pig, they planned a big surprise for the staff and students.
“It was sad, but also it was the responsible thing to do,” Fishburn said. “She was just way too overwhelmed, and then when that happens, like I said, when livestock get overwhelmed. They get unpredictable. That didn’t put her in a safe situation, and it wouldn’t put our teachers in a safe situation.”
The winner of this year’s Kiss the Pig fundraiser was Bair.
“The margin of 18 dollars in total in his jar,” Fishburn said.
The surprise that was revealed to the audience and to Bair was four new animals that students had to pick for Bair to kiss. One was a bunny named Toast, another was a rooster named Randy, and the last ones were two little baby goats that have not been named yet. The audience finally decided that the two baby goats were picked, giving some of the funniest photos of Bair.
“Being a new teacher, I was surprised that I got the most votes,” Bair said. “But, I’m all for helping out.”
