FAIRFIELD — A state championship didn’t seem to be in the cards for a small charter school in central Maine; it has no sports teams after all.

At the end of May, a group of Maine Academy of Natural Sciences students changed all that, winning the Envirothon State Competition last week and dethroning a 14-year school champion in the process. 

Now, four seniors and one sophomore will travel to Alberta, Canada, for the international competition in mid-July. 

“It puts us on the map,” said Evan Coleman, the interim head of schools. “We don’t have sports. This is one of the few teams that we have, so it brings a certain element of pride. We are doing pretty legit science work.”  

Envirothon is a national science-based competition where students complete tasks in aquatic ecology, forestry, soil and land use, wildlife and a chosen current issue. Across the United States, teams come from clubs that take part; teams from Canada and Asia also earned a spot in the competition. 

This year, nine students joined the team: the seniors, who won the state competition and a group of five students from the lower grades. 

They trained during a designated elective time, Elise Gudde, science teacher and Envirothon coach, said. Gudde teaches the students everything from how to take soil samples to helping them identify species of trees and animals. 

“I’m still in shock,” Gudde said about the win. “A lot of these kids haven’t been out of the country, so that is part (of the excitement). We get to take them on this cool travel experience, but also, for the four of them who are seniors, they have worked incredibly hard, but are all passionate about the environment and pursuing that after high school.”

The team of four seniors as well as one alternate will travel to Canada for a weeklong competition, where they will socialize with students from across the United States and Canada, visit a national park and be tested on a daily basis.

The costs are covered by The Maine Association of Conservation Districts, which specifically sets money aside to pay for state schools to participate in the international competitions. Students, however, have to pay for their own airfare and created a GoFundMe to pay for their plane tickets, which are estimated to cost about $10,000. Coleman said they had to expedite a few passports as well. 

The students on the team are Nicholas Hewett, Logan Dube, Rose Jadamec, Chloe Strout and Soleil Moody.

Dube said he’s excited to see Canadian wildlife and learn about an environment that he has never experienced.

Jadamec is grateful for the experience to travel.

“I am not a person who travels much, so it means a lot to me to be able to travel so far and be able to learn a lot with everyone from around the world with people who are from all over the world,” she said.

The Maine Academy of Natural Science was the state’s first charter school and is funded with state money, but not as extensively as public schools are. Charter schools operate differently from public schools. Administration and policy is the responsibility of the headmaster, rather than being split between an administrative head and school board.

Maine currently has nine charter schools. The Maine Academy of Natural Science has 125 students and introduced a lottery system for admissions during the 2024-25 school year due to its rising popularity.