The new school year is well underway, and so is the 2018-2019 Envirothon season. The county champions and state runners-up from last year are back into action, already having meetings and even going on a field trip to Rock State Park.
“Envirothon is like an environment knowledge competition. We meet every Friday from 4 to 6pm and we have a competition in the spring time against every school in the county,” explains junior Brennan Stewart. He was a part of Envirothon team last year and is now a part of the team again. The competition includes written tests, surveys, and experiments with the land and surroundings of the community.
“We had fall training in October and we basically just learned the basics but now we’ll meet every week with Mrs. O’Leary to learn even more,” he explained. The topics for this upcoming season include aquatic ecology, soil/land use, forestry, wildlife, and current issues. The overall 2019 theme is Agriculture and the Environment: Knowledge and Technology to Feed the World.
Junior Erin O’leary is very excited for this upcoming season. “We got really close to winning last year at states and we have a whole new “A” team, well we haven’t really assembled the “A” team yet, but we’re going to have a whole new “A” team this year because most of the rest of the “A’ team left for college last year. So it’s like a new start and I want to show that this team can win just like the other team did.”
There are multiple teams due to the large amount of people that participate in Envirothon, but the “A” team is considered the most prepared and knowledgeable group of students. There is only one main competition each school year, in April, and all of the meetings are spent preparing for this event.
Last year, North Harford beat Harford Christian in the county championship to move on to the state competition, where they placed second. North Harford has won the county competition for two years in a row, now, and they are hoping that they can go all the way to the national championship this year.
Although Envirothon consists of a hard-working and motivated group of students, that does not stop them from having fun. “Yea, other people should join, it’s actually really fun and it might seem like a lot of work because we do like stay after every Friday, but it’s a really fun group of people and there’s food! It’s just an interesting group to be in,” says O’Leary.