Friday, May 20, 2016

The Envirothon

The Envirothon
Joe Settineri

When the new buds begin to form on the trees and the grass sprouts start to jump out of the ground, it is  time for Envirothon. Envirothon is a yearly competition where each school in the Cortland County sends a team and competes in five different categories: soils, forestry, aquatics, wildlife, and current issue. Each score is based out of 100 and they are usually difficult often yielding scores of sixty or less. Additionally, there are points given for the quality of each team’s oral presentation, which they must prepare prior to the event. This year there were eight teams each with five competitors. Each station mentioned above has a test and the team takes the test together. Sometimes the test involves identifying animals, tree’s, soils, or other factors of the environment and can be very challenging.  This year, the Envirothon was on a soaking wet day, the rain was just coming down in droves. We were all drenched, especially those who did not wear boots or a rain jacket. At the end of the day, all of the team's ate lunch in the lodge at Camp Owatta next to the fire to dry off, and the final scores were announced. This year the top three scores were as follows

The Kids (HOMER)- 513
Cincy Red (CINCINNATUS)-463
Cincy White (CINCINNATUS)-432

The winner of the county competition gets to move onto the state competition at Hobart and William Smith colleges on May 24th and 25th. Be sure to root on your classmates: Joe Settineri, Tighe Gugerty, Julia Fouts, Evan Ulrich, and Kennedy George as they make their way to the state competition and congratulate the several other students in our school who competed last Friday.