Right now, a group of Palisades Charter High School students are in Geneva, New York deliberating the use of alternative and renewable energy. Although this issue is generally relegated to the halls of national and local governments and corporate boardrooms, this week it will be given serious and careful thought by hundreds of teenagers from all over the United States competing in the Canon Envirothon national competition. The Canon Envirothon is North America’s largest high school environmental education competition. More than 500,000 students across North America participate annually, competing for recognition, scholarships and prizes. PaliHi’s Team Sequoia, made up of recently graduated Sasha Engelmann, Harry Dobson, Sarah Palladino and Divya Subrahmanyam and senior Ana Escalante, and led by AP environmental science teacher Steven Engelmann are currently representing the state of California. Before qualifying for the national competition, they won the regional competition in Malibu and then the California state competition in Crestline where Pali’s other team, the Kodiak Grizzly Bears (Matthew Correia, Connie Clarke, Shion An, Ethan Larson and Cecilia McGaughran) placed second. ‘The way we dominated the finals, I wouldn’t be surprised if we came in the top five,’ said John Ota, Team Sequoia alternate. ‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed. I think they could come out on top. It’s a lot of our last attempts at this, so they’re going to have to give it all they’ve got.’ The Envirothon is a hands-on environmental problem-solving competition and is divided into five categories: soil, forestry, aquatics, wildlife and a current issue, which this year is alternative and renewable energy. For the first four categories, team members visit different outdoor stations where they must analyze information and provide answers to questions, such as what types of plants could grow in certain soils, how erosion could be prevented or what kind of diseases a species of tree is susceptible to in a given ecosystem. For the current topic section, team members must collaborate to find a solution to a problem, that they then present to a panel of judges in a 15-minute group speech, followed by a five-minute question and answer session in which judges, whose jobs relate to the environment, like park rangers, professors or Environmental Protection Agency employees, grill them on their proposed solution. ‘That’s my favorite part,’ said Engelmann, who enjoys watching his team work together to provide a solution to a current global problem. ‘It’s interesting to see what we’re doing and how it works on a global scale,’ Harry added. Three years ago, it seemed unlikely that PaliHi could have a team qualify for nationals. But Engelmann had caught wind of some type of environmental competition for high school students taking place in Malibu. Despite knowing very little about the event, he coerced his daughter Sasha, then a sophomore, to help him organize a team to compete. ‘My dad one day randomly asked me if I wanted to do something in Malibu State Park two days from then,’ Sasha said. ‘He just said it had something to do with the environment so we got a team together in two days and that’s how it got started.’ Later that school year Pali earned sixth place in the state competition. Several students continued to participate, and after three years their hard work earned them a state title and participation at nationals. To prepare for competition, the team gave up their lunch break once a week during the school year to meet and study aspects of the environment. ‘I would never have thought when I casually went to that first meeting that we’d get this far,’ said Divya, a first year team member. On weekends and after school students took hikes on local trails, visited scenic areas and talked with guest speakers whose jobs are closely associated with environmental issues. ‘All the kids get excited about hikes,’ Engelmann said. ‘Anything that gets them outside; they’re good with.’ Over the summer they have met several times per week, and although the Kodiak Grizzly Bears are not competing at nationals, they have joined Sequoia at practices to help them get ready for the stiff competition they will encounter at the national level. ‘It’s Pali’s first time at nationals, which is really exciting for us, but we don’t know what to expect,’ Sasha said. ‘It will probably be similar to state’same formats for tests’but basically a lot harder competition.’ ‘I’m hoping that our best is good enough,’ Harry added. ‘Who we’re up against is going to be a lot more difficult.’ Fortunately for the PaliHi team, Southern California is rich with variety when it comes to ecosystems, environments and typography. ‘We’ve got such a diverse geography,’ Engelmann said. ‘Everything from deserts to redwood forests and everything in between.’ ‘I feel like a general knowledge of what we’re surrounded by leads to a greater understanding of the environment,’ Harry said. However, because the national competition is on the complete opposite side of the continent, they might run into some problems. ‘California has prepared us for a lot of different ecosystems,’ Sasha said, ‘but the place where the [national] competition is happening is going to be much different.’ Still, the kids remain hopeful that they will succeed. ‘I expect that as a team we can bring the trophy home, but then again so can all the other teams or they wouldn’t be there,’ Ana said. ‘The deciding factor will be our determination, effort, preparation and our ability to surprise and impress the socks off those judges!’
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