The Envirothon team, coached by Ms. Laura. O’Leary placed 10th out of 52 in the National Envirothon Competition in Moncton City, Brunswick, Canada. The competition included teams from the United States, Canada, and China.
Envirothon is an academic environmental team where students learn about different environmental topics and natural resources such as soils, aquatics, wildlife, forestry and then a fifth topic that changes every year. Last year it was adapting to climate change. They pick the fifth topic based on where the next international competition is going to be.
The team was made up of seniors Blake Carberry, Maddie Caiazzo, Anna O’Leary, junior Frank DeLuca, and recent graduate Julia Eakes, This was the first time a NH team qualified for the international competition.
O’Leary said, “We won the country competition and that is a big stinking deal because it’s super, super competitive. For the longest time Harford Christian always just won and won for years, more than a decade.” O’Leary added, “They got a 98% in forestry 89% in wildlife; they were amazing really.”
Caiazzo, a senior , says, “I definitely learned a lot and it made me want to have a career in environmental science and just getting to know people that have careers in environmental science made me learn a lot about what I could do with that job.” Because of Envirothon, Caiazzo wants to get a career in environmental studies. Caiazzo said, “On behalf of winning the competitions I’m proud of us all, we really had to work together and we studied and worked so hard for it. So, I think we deserved it.”
The hours and stress put into the competitions are intense, according to Carberry. “They gave you a massive schedule of what you were doing each day, and they had stuff from 6am to midnight. So you were just booked with so much stuff everyday for nationals.” During their time in Canada these students worked all day with really only one day to explore.
