COWEN, W.Va. – A five-member team of students from Morgantown High School won the 2026 West Virginia Envirothon competition at Camp Caesar in Webster County April 17, just two years after a team first formed at the school and won the Rookie Team Award at the 2024 event.

The “Morgantown 1” team of Max Chen, Vic Chen, Ryan Chen, Larry Du and Sunni Guppi topped the second-place Ravenswood FFA team on Friday at Camp Caesar.

The Morgantown team has been on the rise over the last two years, finishing in fifth place overall during their inaugural competition and then in third place last year at the event at Cedar Lakes Conference Center. Their advisor is Alex Godfrey.

The team will share a $5,000 scholarship and will compete in the 2026 NCF-Envirothon competition at Mississippi State University in Starkville, Miss., from July 19-25. For finishing in second place, the Ravenswood FFA team will share a $4,000 scholarship. 

Rounding out the top five teams were the Clay County Caddisflies in third place ($3,000 scholarship), the “Goopy Gars” team from Jefferson High School in fourth place ($2,000 scholarship) and the Doddridge FFA team from Doddridge County High School in fifth place ($1,500 scholarship).   

Sixth- through 10th-place were: Moorefield High School’s team in sixth place, the “Morgantown 2” team from Morgantown High School in seventh place, the Upshur FFA team from Buckhannon-Upshur High School in eighth place, the Blennerhassett FFA team from Wood County Technical Center in ninth place and the “Ecomaniacs” team from Oak Glen High School in 10th place. 

Teams who scored the highest in each of the five Envirothon “stations” also shared $500 awards. The Morgantown 2 team won the Aquatics station award; Ravenswood FFA won both the Soils and Wildlife station awards; the Clay County Caddisflies won the Forestry station award; and the Ecomaniacs team from Oak Glen won the Fifth Topic station award.

Five-member teams who participate in the Envirothon explore the environmental and earth sciences through five disciplines: aquatics, forestry, soils, wildlife, and a current environmental topic known as the "fifth topic." 

This year’s fifth topic scenario was: “Nonpoint Source Pollution Mitigation.” Students explored a scenario where fish were not plentiful in a local creek, and posed hypotheses about what could be done to improve the aquatic environment and what problems existed. The students, acting as an environmental science club, used data collected by the state Department of Environmental Protection, ruled out some hypotheses, came up with a plan for interviewing neighbors, and developed a presentation about how the neighbors could help improve the creek’s water quality.

Ravenswood FFA also won the Top FFA Team award, and members of the Spring Valley High School team won this year’s Rookie Team Award.

Both the winning Morgantown 1 team and the Morgantown 2 team, the top-scoring Aquatics station team, were sponsored by the Monongahela Conservation District. 

Teams participated from Clay, Doddridge, Hampshire, Hancock, Hardy, Jackson, Jefferson, Monongalia, Monroe, Tyler, Upshur, Wayne and Wood counties.

Sponsors for the West Virginia Envirothon include the Weyerhaeuser Foundation, Berkshire Hathaway Energy Gas Transmission and Storage, the West Virginia Conservation Agency, the EQT Foundation, the Northern Panhandle Conservation District, Toyota Motor Manufacturing of WV, the USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Hope Gas, the Western Conservation District, and the West Virginia Association of Conservation Districts.  

Numerous volunteers make up the West Virginia Envirothon Committee, which includes representatives from the West Virginia Association of Conservation Districts, the West Virginia Division of Forestry, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources, WVU Extension, the West Virginia Conservation Agency, the U.S. Forest Service, the West Virginia Department of Agriculture, USDA-NRCS and several of the state’s 14 conservation districts.