Five Lexington High School (LHS) students eagerly boarded a plane from Boston for Alberta, Canada on July 19. A week later, they returned with two plaques and a massive check—declaring them the winners of a $18,000 prize in the 2025 International Envirothon Competition held at Mount Royal University in Alberta.
Envirothon, a contest for high school students, is funded by the National Conservation Foundation and focuses on environmental science and preservation. A total of 51 five-student teams from across the United States, Canada, and China competed based on their mastery of five core subjects: aquatic ecology, forestry, soils and land use, wildlife, and oral presentation.
On the first day of the competition, after an opening ceremony consisting of a land acknowledgement and indigenous rites, students were bused out to a local forest and were given a lesson on forest stewardship. The day after, each team member took a series of tests in the subjects they specialized in.
“Each test is fifty minutes long, and it’s mostly [on] paper, but you do have some hands-on activities,” said Erin Suh, a member of the team. “For forestry, you identify plants and you measure trees. And then for wildlife, you look at real animal skulls and pelts to identify them.”
After the test portion of the competition, the team also had an opportunity to take a trip to the nearby Banff National Park, where the participants explored the meadows and hiked in the woods. After the trip, they returned to campus to prepare for the next stage of the contest: an oral presentation.
For the presentation, the team was isolated in a single room for six hours to create a pitch about environmental conservation.
“They give you a little briefing about some environmental issue, in this case how to manage this forest for a bunch of different land uses… they give you a computer—it’s not connected to the internet—and some resources, and you make a powerpoint [addressing the issue],” said Tomer Elkayam, another member of the team.
They then presented their pitch to a panel of judges. The top three teams were called back to present again and receive a new score.
LHS has won the Massachusetts Envirothon Competition and represented the state at the international competition every year since 2021. In 2024, LHS won sixth place overall.
“This year, our team in general just wanted to do better than we did last year. That gave us a lot of room for just focusing on improving rather than winning. And that helped us stay relaxed and really enjoy every moment of the competition,” Suh said.
Going into the awards ceremony, co-captain Eileen Ho said she wasn’t nervous at all.
“We all worked really hard. I know everyone put in the hours, so I was like, ‘Okay. We did everything we possibly could. I’m really proud of us, and what happens happens,’” Ho said.
Ultimately, the LHS team narrowly beat Maryland for first place with a final score of 620.67 to 619.67, with New York finishing in third with 571.67 points. In total, the LHS team won $18,000: $15,000 for its overall first place finish, and an additional $3,000 bonus for winning the forestry and soils and land use subcategories.
As to what the team will spend the money on, member Caroline Ehmann said she’ll put it towards “college tuition, pizza, and college clothes.”
In the future, the team hopes to recruit new members and continue their environmental advocacy, which has included banning the sale of plastic water bottles in the LHS cafeteria. Of the five members of the team—Erin Suh, Tomer Elkayam, Caroline Ehmann, and co-captains Jocelyn Chen and Eileen Ho—all but Chen are graduated LHS seniors.
“It’s our last marathon,” said Suh. “Obviously, that did put a lot of hope into this competition because we wanted to do our best and leave with no regrets.”
How cool is this! Congratulations!