Two Decorah HS Envirothon teams do well at State, but miss qualifying for the International Competition

Two teams from Decorah High School competed Monday in the State Envirothon Contest at the Des Moines area YMCA camp near Boone. There were 15teams in attendance from across the state, representing the highest scores in their respective regional contests.   The top team would win an expense paid trip to the international contest to be held at Pocatello, Idaho representing Iowa.

When theresults were tabulated, Decorah's "The Conspiracy of Lemurs" team finished the best in the state in the forestry category and a mere 5.25 points out of first place in the overall competition and a trip to Idaho.

The other team, "Decorah OCP," was forced to do much of their competition with only four members as their fifth member became very ill Sunday night while lodging at the YMCA camp.  In spite of them lacking one of their members, they still finished in the top ten teams.

Following the competition, coach Larry Berland said, "In the 18 years that I have been involved with the competition I have never seen snow at the test site nor had someone get very ill and not be able to compete.  Hopefully, those two happenings will not be experienced again."

The "Conspiracy of Lemurs" team consisted of Anja Madsen,Danielle Lundtvedt, Kaia Neal, Lillian Grouws and Sofie Grouws. The "Decorah OCP" team consisted of: Josh Nierengarten, Luke Stock, Dan Willie, James Paulson and Jarod Phillips.