Saturday, December 9, 2023, four Granbury ISD middle school students traveled as our Granbury Middle School team, the BBQ Buccaneers, with two of our high school BBQ teams to Athens, TX to compete in their second contest of the season. Team members include William Burenheide (GMS), Kaylee Leisure, Eli Erwin, and Harper Langdon (all from AMS). This was their first contest as a full team, and they showed up in a BIG way! The BBQ Buccaneers were the ONLY middle school team in a field of 22. They competed against 21 high school teams, including two of our own!
For this contest, the team of four prepared five dishes that were due at a specific time for each course. They are not allowed to prepare or cook anything until the contest begins at 9:00 am, so time management and really knowing your ingredients largely impacts your success. In order of turn-in times, the courses are pork chop, skirt steak taco, smoked half chicken, St. Louis style pork ribs, and chili. The BBQ Buccaneers showed a tremendous amount of teamwork, resiliency, camaraderie, skill, and grit. They modeled positive behaviors, sportsmanship, and had a lot of fun. When the smoke cleared on the day, here are the results from the contest:
Skirt Steak Taco – 3rd place (prepared by William Burenheide)
Smoked Chicken – 7th place (prepared by Harper Langdon)
St. Louis Pork Ribs – 5th place (prepared by Kaylee Leisure)
Overall – 7th place!!
This Top Ten finish qualifies them for the State BBQ Contest on May 3 & 4, 2024 in Burnet, TX. This is an extraordinary accomplishment for a middle school team and says so much about these kids, their high school mentors, and their coaches. The BBQ Buccaneers are coached by Crystal Burenheide & Will Leisure, with a little guidance from Brianne Langdon.
In addition to this fantastic showing by our middle school team, we also had a 10th place overall finish with the Pirate Pit Masters and several top ten category finishes for our high schoolers, as follows:
Pirate Pit Masters – 10th Overall (Jackson Barton, Alex Vargas, Maria Marez, Melanie Yanez)
7th pork chop – Melanie Yanez
7th Ribs – Maria Marez
4th Chili – Alex Vargas
Hot Ship (Nevaeh Taber, Levi Logsdon, Nolan Segars, Samantha Vasquez, Hayden Lee)
9th Chili – Levi Logsdon
3rd Chicken – Nevaeh Taber