PNH Envirothon Teams Take Home First and Third Place in Regional Envirothon Competition, Headed to State.

On April 6, 2017, Parkway North’s Envirothon teams took home the first and third place trophy for the St.Louis Regional Envirothon, and are headed to the Missouri State Envirothon Competition on April 26, 2017.

The competition consisted of high schools from around Missouri competing in conservation and environmental issues. The categories include forestry, aquatics, soils, and wildlife as well as a current issue.

Envirothon coach and science teacher Lorrie Crossett said, “Every year, they have a new current issue, and they have to give an oral presentation and use their problem-solving skills to solve a scenario.”

The A team consisted of seniors Claire Maher, Aditya Gokhale, Jillian Day, and juniors Sarah Butterfield and Aerin Leigh Lammers. The B team consisted of juniors Deepa Shukla and Saayli Khambekar, and sophomores Sam Amacher, Ojasvi Pawar, and Thomas Cholak.

“I was in charge of learning about the current issue for the A team. The current issue involves agricultural and water sustainability and stewardship. I mostly had to spend my time learning about the different agricultural practices that don’t harm the environment. I also provided the snacks for my team,” said Lammers.

Some of the Envirothon team members were part of the Lexus Eco Challenge and had some background knowledge on what to do.

Cholak said, “It was really fun because I enjoyed working with the other people in my group because they were really nice.The A team had the same people from a different organization called Lexus Eco Challenge so I had known they would work good together”.

“I felt pretty uncertain about it honestly. You have no idea how much the other teams prepared or how good they are which can be really unnerving,” said Lammers.

There were multiple changes to the competition this year that put the team on edge, but they were still able to pull through.

Crossett said, “The scores were higher this year than last year for all of our teams. After we were finished with the test, they went back to debrief us and tell all our teams how we did, what we missed, and review with us. I think we did better than we did last year. All three teams improved from last year.”

There are still some things that the team wants to work on in order to get to where they want to be.

“I think that we are going to need to spend a lot of time on the current issue and our oral presentation. Though we haven’t gotten [the current issue] problem yet, they’ll send it to us. We usually get it a week to two weeks before the state competition. The team needs to dedicate a good amount of time outside of school to prepare themselves for the state competition,” said Crossett.

Even so, both teams have worked hard this year to get to where they are now and hope to stand a chance against some of the top schools.

“I hope we make it to nationals obviously, but there is some steep competition at state. There is one school who has consistently beaten us every year, so I hope we have a shot at beating them this year,” said Lammers.

by Ijeoma Nkenchor, Multiple Media Guru