PHOTO PROVIDED Sugar Valley Rural Charter School’s Environmental and Natural Resources team placed first at Eastern Nationals recently.

LOGANTON — A team of Sugar Valley Rural Charter School blew away the competition at Eastern Nationals recently, bringing home first place.

The competition, taking place in Massachusetts, is an agricultural competition that brings together high school students from across the Northeast to compete against one another in numerous contests. There are 17 states eligible to attend, with each able to send students for specific topics.

The school’s Environmental and Natural Resources (ENR) team, consisting of 11th grade students Marrin Clester, Carson Sanders and Evangeline Andrus, and senior Austin Duck, qualified for Nationals after placing second at States in early June. Due to college commitments, Duck was unable to attend the competition and was replaced by Kohana Yamashita. Out of six teams in their division, the ENR team took first place.

The students were well prepared for the competition, having studied and extensively practiced with Advisor Robbie Weaver.

“I wasn’t surprised they won. I told them for probably a month that they were going to win. I worked on the material with them, made up tests and they took the tests. They did really well. They didn’t want to let me down,” Weaver joked.

The students were expected to answer multiple choice questions centered around the environment and natural resources, identify plants and various types of equipment.

“A lot of the material we had was what we were already familiar with. It was all stuff we already had seen before. I didn’t expect us to get first,” said Clester.

Where they really shined this year was in their presentation.

This group of students have all participated in Envirothon, and have a lot of practice in creating presentations as a result.

“We do presentations in Envirothon when we go to state competitions. A couple of these guys have been to the state competition Envirothon as well,” said Weaver.

The students were given one hour to create a solution for cleaning a reservoir that had run off from a large dairy farm in a small town, create a presentation and then present it to the judges.

The team impressed the judges by giving multiple options for clean up, including contacting local legislators.

Because this is the first time this group of students has participated in nationals, they are able to attend states again next year. If they take first place in that competition, they will qualify for the National FFA Convention & Expo in Indianapolis, Ind.