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JAY – For the second year in a row, Jay’s Envirothon Team is working toward going to the national competition.
It’s actually the internationals; the students participating in the Canon International Envirothon will be competing against Canadian teams in addition to those teams from all 50 states. The Jay team, facing a massive fundraising effort, hours and hours of studying and adapting to a very different ecosystem, can’t wait.
“The whole town is proud of them,” Selectman Warren Bryant said at Monday’s selectman meeting.
The Envirothon is a competition that pits teams of high school students against a series of environmental science-themed tests and problems. The students score points with correct answers in five sections; soils, aquatics, wildlife and forestry, as well as a “current issue” topic which changes from year to year. In addition to high schools, clubs and other organizations, such as the 4-H Club, science explorer posts or coalitions of home-schooled students, also send teams to regional, state and international competitions.
The tests are administered by professional resource management experts and are very hands-on. For example, the soils test might consist of large test pit, with students identifying and studying soil types.
“You couldn’t take these tests in a classroom,” Rob Taylor said, having coached Envirothon teams in Jay for 15 years. “It requires the professional tools (compasses, GPS, etc.) and the setting.”
The current issue topic is groundwater, and the competition requires that the students conduct a research project and then prepare a presentation on their project. The Jay team developed water protection plans for the Spruce Mountain Ski Area, with assistance and data from Sue Breau-Kelly of Maine Rural Water. The ski mountain, which is the only local public water system that utilizes groundwater rather than lakes, was a natural choice for the Envirothon students, many of whom ski.
At the international event, the students will be asked to use the same skills, while sequestered for eight hours, to solve a problem and develop a 20-minute presentation on their solution.
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The Jay team that’s planning to go to the competition held in California this year consists of six students, five sophomores and a junior, all of whom have prior experience with the competition. The five sophomores, Lexi Deering, Kristy Macomber, Jacob Roy, Sam Hutchinson and Isaac Couture, were part of a freshman team that competed last year, while Junior Beth Moore was a member of the team that took first place at both the regional and state events in 2009.
That team traveled to the international competition, which was held in North Carolina. The events, according to Taylor, were held in the gardens and grounds surrounding the Biltmore Estate.
After placing third place at the southwestern regionals this year, they won the state event by 28 points, which is impressive given the maximum score is 500.
The international event is being held at the University of California at Fresno. Although event locations are not announced, Taylor said he wouldn’t be surprised if the students went to nearby Yosemite National Park. Therein lies the challenge; the Jay team has been working with Maine soils, water and ecosystems for months. Now they’ll need to take that knowledge and apply it to the very different environment of central California.
Taylor has already burned DVDs for the team, with a huge amount of research material for them to study before the internationals in August. On top of that is the fundraising; airplane tickets, especially cross-country trips, are expensive. Taylor and the team have an array of events planned to raise some funds, and went to the selectmen Monday evening to ask for funding from a reserve account associated with ongoing forestry work in the recreation area near the high school.
Interestingly, it was the Envirothon team, and other science-minded Jay school classes and clubs, that did much of the leg work for the recreation area, including developing the trail systems and starting the Kids for Trees program.
“The kids really made an effort for that program,” Taylor said on Monday, thanking selectmen. He noted that the team had trained on its the forestry portion of the competition while working in the rec area. “This is sort of closing the loop.”
Selectmen made up to $3,000 available to the team, and asked to be kept in the loop of fundraising progress.
“This is a once in a lifetime thing,” Selectman Steve McCourt said.
The first fundraising activity is this Sunday, June 27, when the Envirothon team will co-host the St. Rose Parish Hall breakfast with the Knights of Columbus and the local Explorer Post. The breakfast is 9 a.m. until 10:30 a.m., with food costing $5 a plate.
On July 1, the team will be holding a tag day outside of Otis Credit Union. Then, on July 3, the team will sell concessions along the parade route of the July 4 parade. On July 31, they’ll do the same thing at Ameriprise’s document shredding event on Jay Hill.
The students are also going to do a bottle drive and a raffle, among other possible events.
