Envirothon teams place second, third

On Friday, two teams competed in IRL Envirothon placing second and third against teams from five counties.

The junior team, “Plant Touch This” consisting of Robbie Breininger, Claire Goffinet, Sara Tennent, Sarah Tanke, and Claire Rauchfuss won first place in Brevard County, earning them a place in the state competition.

“It was really exciting,” Tanke said. “I don’t think that we studied as much as we did last year but we won two of the six events. We weren’t really expecting much from it but it was a surprise and fun.”

The senior team, “Turn Down for What” consisting of David Anderson, Jessica Blanco, Nick Etrick, Andrew Lim, and Erin Yandel placed third overall in the competition.

“It went well, it was really fun and we all learned a lot.” Anderson said. “There was one part that was on aquatics and we got to test the pH of water and that was cool.”

Envirothon consists of multiple contests, including a oral presentation, a multiple choice test, current issue selection which was about bees and hands on activities to determine the best of each contest.

“For forestry I had to identify types of trees and measure how tall they were,” Goffinet said, “Then for soil you actually had to touch the soil and say what kind of soil it was.”