North Harford’s own Envirothon team successfully brought a win back home to the nest at their recent competition. The team had to solve a topic relating to soil and water conservation. Adviser Mrs. Laura O’Leary explained, “There’s this fifth topic and it’s sort of like a current event, problem solving topic. This year, we got a problem to solve where we had to write a soil and water conservation plan for landowners that were going to be farming an inherited piece of property.”

    Solving the difficult challenge was not a one person job; multiple students helped with the success of finding the solution to their problem. The team included juniors Will Beltran, , Aubrey Williams, Ryan O’Leary, Olivia Sheldon and sophomore Will Eakes. Sheldon, who was responsible for the soil conservation plan shared that the most challenging part about the whole project was making a 15 minute presentation as detailed as possible. “We found all of the best management practice for the farm. We evaluated what kinds of soil the farm had, which is what allowed us to pick the best management practices and determine the best crop rotation,” explained Sheldon.

    The team also had helping hands backstage from students and professionals.Junior Alayna Dorbert contributed with helping create impressive posters and junior Andrew Lechner had an important role with the budget of the plan. With the challenging problem, the team suck out with additional help outside of the team. “We had to have a soil guy come in and help us a little bit and he spent like a half an hour to help us figure out how to do the resel calculation, it was kind of crazy. You wouldn’t think something about soils wouldn’t be so math related,” shared Laura O’Leary.

    All of the hard work paid off for the team, who ended up scoring a 93 out of 100, winning first place.”John Carroll used too many slides and gave pamphlets out to the judges and that’s kind of not part of the rules. Harford Christian, who we always want to beat, got third with an 87,” stated adviser. North Harford not only won, but was the only team who achieved a score in the 90s.

    Looking ahead, Laura O’Leary believes that her team has a good chance in winning in the next competition on April 11th, qualifying them for States, and maybe even Nationals looking farther in the future. The presentation, which was the assessment at the recent competition, is only one sixth of the team’s total score. The team will then be tested on April 11th, in soils, forestry, aquatics and wildlife. “They do it as a five person team, I’ll probably have an A team, a B team and a C team because I have a lot of kids who are interested. If we don’t win this year, and I think we have the chance to, then we will totally win next year because we have the powerhouse of kids,” stated Laura O’Leary.

We had to calculate the soil erosion factor, which was probably like 500 calculations that Ryan O’Leary toiled over for hours and hours and then we had to describe all the best management practices we would put into place at that farm to decrease the amount of soil erosion. We also had to have a budget and grants to pay for all of these things and we made these amazing maps that Will Eakes toiled over. We had to do it in this soil conservation plan which was Olivia Sheldon’s big deal, Aubrey was our BMP expert and they presented it so well. Will Beltran, he was the one who researched and presented our budget. So it was Will Beltran, Will Eakes, Aubrey Williams, Ryan O’Leary and Olivia Sheldon, they were the presentation team, but there were people who helped along the way. We couldn’t have done it without Alayna Dorbert, she was a master poster maker. Andrew [Lechner] was important too, very important with the budget. It was really exciting, we got a 93 out of 100 and the next team was  and now we’re just rearing to go because we would love to, our next is April 11th, when we have the big school wide competition where we all come together and take the five tests that will tell us who is actually the big winner.”

“The presentation is the only thing that’s separate, it’s really only one sixth of our score. Then they go out there on the 11th and that five person team will take a test on forestry, a test on soils, a test on aquatics, a test on wildlife and then a test on the fifth topic. ”

“We get to compete on the state level, and if we win there, then we get to compete at an international level, which is pretty cool.”

“It was hours and hours of hard work and I would say that resel calculation was the most challenging part.”