I am often asked how the show team got started anyway. My usual answer is "not exactly like you would think". In 1998-2000, there were several kids from Angelina County traveling to jackpot meat goat shows on weekends, meeting up with friends from neighboring counties at the shows. We traveled every Saturday as a group taking turns with the "tail-gate" lunch menu items. During one of those lunches one lady said that "we ought to make a show team out of these kids, figure some point system for place and at the end of the year, we could each by our own child a jacket so they could have little friendly competition for the show season". Other ideas were kicked in -- all just kicking the idea around.

In September of that same year, at the East Texas State Fair in Tyler, I saw the first rough draft of by-laws for a show team. Linda Teer of Rockin' T Boer Goats in Lufkin, Texas took the idea to the Board of Directors of ETGRA. She presented a rough draft set of bylaws for an ETGRA sponsored youth program, which would promote jackpot meat goat shows in the East Texas area, as well as encourage those with meat goat projects for their county fair. The ETGRA directors voted to support this program and JETMGST began.

In our first year we didn't expect to have but maybe 40 kids. We were counting the "gang" and those that we knew from shows that we felt like would be interested. Boy where we shocked when we ended up with 90 members! We had three age groups - Seniors, Juniors and Pee Wee's. We sanctioned 9 shows that first year starting off with the ETGRA sanctioned Texas Classic in October. Our first awards banquet was held on April 26, 2003. ETGRA helped financially support us that first year. Several members also offered financial support by sponsoring an award. The financial goal was that JETMGST would be able to support itself with membership fees, show sanction fees, and fundraisers.

We didn't have a clue what was going to hit us when it came time to start plans for our 2002-2003 year. That year we split the age groups into four groups, adding Intermediates to the list. We sanctioned 10 shows, crossed our fingers and hoped the program would still be of interest, but braced for the unexpected. After all the memberships were in we had 103 members. Numbers continued to stay up in the 2003-2004 year with a total of 99 members and 9 sanctioned shows. ETGRA no longer had to financial support this group.

Membership dropped in the 2004-2005 year, as a large group of the original "traveling band" graduated from high school. Memberships picked back up in 2006-2007 year and interest has continued to rise.

Linda Teer is no longer a part of this program, but her vision, idea, and dream for this program continues to be a huge part in the direction of JETMGST.

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