Four University of Wisconsin students took top honors at the Intercollegiate Dairy Cattle Judging Contest Tuesday as part of the World Dairy Expo.

Out of 20 teams, UW’s team placed first with team members and UW seniors Brian Coyne and Chelsea Holschbach placing first and second individually out of all participants. UW seniors Ben Sarbacker and Kelly Sime are also on the team.

In addition, Coyne earned the most points out of anyone in the contest and in contest history with 876 out of 900 possible, he said.

The goal of cattle judging is for each team member to judge a class of animals. How the students place the animals is then compared to how officials do it, Coyne added, which is where points are earned.

Each person competes as an individual, but the top three scores on the team are added together to get the team score.

Winning the contest overall was exciting for Coyne, who said the four have been competing together as a team since they were sophomores.

For Holschbach, winning the contest was the culmination of all the team’s hard work.

“It was a really big achievement for all of us,” she said. “Our main goal was to win in Madison.”

The entire team started competing at a young age through 4-H, except for Holschbach, who Coyne said did not start until high school. In fact, Sarbacker, Sime and Coyne competed against each other prior to forming the team three years ago, he said.

The team started practicing at the end of August and invested between 100 and 120 hours in preparing for the competition, according to Coyne.

They even took overnight trips to farms in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Holschbach took second overall, which she said she was happy with because it helped the team win the contest.

As for his accomplishment, Coyne said he never thought he would score so high.

“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “For me a normal contest is to lose about 50-60 points on a whole contest between placings and reasons…it’s incredibly lucky – that’s what I blame it on.”