“My house is in the middle of the woods and we have a creek that runs at the edge of it,” senior Elizabeth Hillstrom said. “I grew up playing outdoors, very connected to nature, and I suspect this is why I love the opportunities afforded by Envirothon to get outside and study the natural world.”

On April 17, the Albemarle High School Envirothon team placed third in the Regional Tournament, a competition that “touches and positively influences the lives of more than 500,000 young people across the country,” according to the North American Envirothon website.

“Envirothon is an academic competition about environmental science topics,” senior Annie Lopez said. “The team works together to complete tests in forestry, aquatics, soils, wildlife and a special topic that changes every year. This year it is grasslands.”

Albemarle has two teams of five people this year that both competed in the local Envirothon competition: a freshman team and an upperclassmen team. Lopez, along with the seniors Hillstrom, Thomas Teisberg, Eric Hahn, Naaila Ahmad, Eli Mackay and sophomore Stacy Vitko rotate in and out of being the core team of five that placed second to Eastern View High School in the local competition, held at Montpelier. After the team’s third place win at Regionals, the group will move on to the State competition on May 19 at Virginia State University.

In the competition, the team of five gives a 20-minute long presentation about its special topic, which is rangeland/pastureland management. “Making the presentation every year challenges us to find creative, yet realistic ways to solve actual problems that exist in Virginia,” Lopez said. The group also participates in a variety of tests during a day that is spent outdoors.

“At the competitions, we walk around outside to different stations where we take tests on field skills and theory in each of [the] subjects. After that, we give a presentation on a particular problem within the rangeland management category,” Hillstrom said.

Each of the tests in field skills is based on the five categories of Envirothon. In the forestry category, students “walk through the woods and identify different trees based on their bark and leaves,” Mackay said. Other tests include identifying macroinvertebrates for the aquatics test and answering questions about local species and natural processes. For example, “Most people don’t know that Kentucky Bluegrass is an actual grass, not just a kind of music,” Mackay said.

All of the tests on these field skills and the presentation are completed as a whole team and there are no individual projects.

To prepare for the competitions, the Envirothon team started meeting Monday mornings in the fall to plan out their presentation and work on knowledge skills.

“In competition season, most of our meeting time goes to preparing the presentation and learning as much as possible about the five subjects on the tests,” Hillstrom said. “We also take field trips to help connect this knowledge with real experiences.”

Since most of the team members are seniors, including the three alternates, the group has felt a certain advantage in their competition.

“The team is really strong this year because we’ve got a lot of returning seniors,” Lopez said. “That means a lot of widespread knowledge when taking the tests and some more confidence in the presentation.” And their effort in the Envirothon project has payed off.

“Their presentation is one of the best I’ve seen in five years,” Envirothon team advisor Walter Chaney said.

“It’s contagious,” Chaney said about why people get involved in Envirothon. “Students surprise themselves with how much knowledge they have to solve problems and they gain a deep understanding of how man can make an environment situation better or worse.”

Hillstrom finds the necessary studying for Envirothon to be quite interesting and has inspired her passion for the environment. “I feel we should do as much as possible to protect our natural resources for the rest of the world and for generations to come,” Hillstrom said.

The team is confident that the next few generations for their Envirothon team will carry out the same mission of protecting the environment. “Even though we have so many experienced seniors, it was also great that we were able to form a whole freshman team. They gave it their all and learned a lot just from participating in that one competition,” Lopez said. “I’m really excited about the future of the team now that we have an up and coming group.”

“My overall opinion of Envirothon is that it is more than just a competition where you take tests – it has taught me so much useful common knowledge about the environment and how complex the problem-solving process is for environmental issues,” Lopez said.

Hillstrom also recalls her two years on the Envirothon team, stating how this year’s rangeland management presentation compares to last year’s sustainable development and non-point source pollution project.

“These are very different areas of environmental science, so there is a completely new set of knowledge to be gained,” Hillstrom said. “This is part of what I like about Envirothon: it’s always a fresh challenge, and you know there will be something more to learn.”