Blair preliminarily seized the top three places in the first round of competition at the Montgomery County Envirothon held yesterday, April 27. Final rankings will be determined after a presentation portion of the competition.


Seniors Sherri Geng, Kevin Kahn, Randy Li, Eric Ma and Renee Park of the group "Dead Last" won first place in the competition. Within the next couple of weeks they, as well as the second through fifth place winners - a Blair sophomore group that placed second, a Blair junior group that placed third and two Wootton groups - will be evaluated on effective presentation skills. Each team will have to research and present a "Cultural Resource Assessment" on the Patapsco River Valley.

This year, nine Blair groups, five Wootton groups and one group of alternates competed for the top five spots. Once the presentation scores are added to the competition scores for the five teams, the team with the highest cumulative score will advance to the state competition on June 21-23. One Maryland team will advance to the Canon International Envirothon competition on July 18-24 in Springfield, Missouri.

One team from Blair and one team from Wootton were signed up for this year's competition but did not compete. The Magnet program, however, still paid the mandatory $40 enrollment fee for each of the ten Blair groups that signed up.