In a competitive gathering of Kansas’ finest young biologists, the freshman Manhattan High Envirothon Team made MHS history by becoming the first team from Manhattan to ever participate in the competition, with the girls team placing ninth and the boys fourth in their regionals April 5.

“Considering it’s Manhattan’s first year [participating] I think I’m pretty happy. [with fourth place],” freshman Allen Zhang said.

While this is the first time MHS has participated in the competition, according to their website the Kansas Envirothon has been a state competition for 25 years. The competition features events focusing around field biology. These events include soils, forestry, wildlife and aquatics, as well as a current environmental issue in Kansas in which competitors must give an oral presentation on how to solve it.

The different individuals on teams basically took a test on their designated subjects and, as a group, the teams gave a presentation on how to solve this year’s current environmental issue of “Agricultural Soil and Water Conservation Stewardship.”

Judges ranked competitors based on the number of correct questions on their test, as well as how ideal their solution for the current issue was.

The teams [boys and girls] have been preparing for competition for about five weeks, using their time in advisory to explore their different topics and addressing their current issue.

However, even after all their practice the team still had complications.

“The hardest part was probably agreeing on an answer within our group of five … we had different  background knowledge on each field of biology and sometimes we debated over the answer,” Zhang said.

The team is continuing on in the competition, and moves on from regionals to state competition on Apr. 26 at Camp Aldrich. From there, if they win the will move on to nationals in Vancouver.