The Watauga High School Envirothon Team participated in the regional competition recently where they came in third place. The regional competition, which is organized by the NC Envirothon Committee of the North Carolina Association of Soil and Water Conservation Districts, was held on March 22, 2023 with schools from 12 counties participating. WHS participates in the Area 2 Northwest Envirothon.
The goal of the Envirothon competition is to provide enrichment and educational opportunities to students through environmental study.
“It is a competition between different schools based on environmental concepts,” said team captain Max Ramey. “We met every Wednesday morning, during at least one flex period a week, and studied independently.Each time we met we focused on one of the five different fields.”
Participating students are tested on five areas of environmental science. These areas are soil, aquatic ecology, wildlife, forestry, and current issues. Each member of the team is assigned one of these areas of expertise to focus their study on.
“My assigned area of expertise was Aquatic Ecology, but I was also able to use a lot of my prior knowledge in Wildlife and Forestry to contribute to those areas of the competition as well,” said Ramey.
The students on this year’s team were Silas Powell who covered wildlife, Gwendolyn Anderson who covered soils, Virginia St. Clair who covered current events, Chloe Ellis who covered forestry, and Grayson Elliott who was an alternate.
The Watauga team’s achievements are also notable as they were the only team from a traditional public highschool to place so highly.
“We were the only typical public high school in the top seven,” said Ramey.
Due to their placement the WHS team did qualify for the state Envirothon competition.
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