Trojans shine on big stage

Dirt Club wins top regional awards at contest in Oklahoma

By CLAUDINE SAN NICOLAS, Staff Writer
WAILUKU — In their first try in national competition, a St. Anthony Junior Senior High School team — the Dirt Club — captured two regional titles last week.

Senior Ted Dodson, junior Christopher Fernandez and sophomores Frank DeFeliccia and Ryan MacLeod were crowned the Western Region champions in two categories — land judging and homesite evaluation — at the 57th annual National Land & Range Judging Contest held May 5-7 in Oklahoma City.

In the national competition involving 170 high schools from around the country, St. Anthony ranked seventh overall for homesite evaluation and 13th overall in land judging. Individually, DeFeliccia placed 13th among more than 650 students in homesite evaluation, and Dodson had the highest overall score among his teammates, taking the 25th spot among all competitors.

The students were coached by Ryan’s dad, their Dirt Club adviser and science teacher, Paul MacLeod.

“These guys represented the school, they represented Maui and the state of Hawaii really well,” Paul MacLeod said Monday following the team’s return from Oklahoma.

The contest is sponsored by the Oklahoma Association of Conservation Districts and related agencies as a way to encourage students to learn about the qualities of soil in understanding the role of land in environmental and agricultural management.

Contestants are taken to a field where they evaluate the land and soil for factors such as surface and subsurface texture, permeability, potential for erosion and quality for growing crops, for range use or for home sites.

In this year’s contest, the students competed in pouring rain for about half of an 80-minute evaluation period in which they analyzed four different fields. Each team is made up of four students.

The St. Anthony team took the Western Region trophies in the 4-H category for both land judging and homesite evaluation. There were also contests among schools with Future Farmers of America chapters.

Ryan MacLeod said he’s especially proud to have been part of a team that comes from a high school with fewer than 300 students that competed against teams from schools with enrollments of more than 1,000 students and full agriculture-education programs.

“We have it as a club and we do it for fun,” MacLeod said.

“There was never any pressure to win,” DeFeliccia said. “We just went out and had fun.”

To get to the national competition, St. Anthony’s team won a Maui District contest and then defeated six-time champion Kauai High School last October to earn the right to represent Hawaii.

The St. Anthony team held fundraisers to help pay the cost of traveling to Oklahoma, with the Soil and Water Conservation Districts in Central Maui, West Maui, Hana and Olinda-Kula giving a boost of more than $8,000.

The timing was less than ideal for the students. Final examinations are coming up next week, but the four team members and the science teacher were excused from classes for the week of the contest.

In the month leading up to the contest, the Maui team learned a new set of rules while studying types of soil found in Oklahoma but not in Hawaii. In the contest, each team member does an individual evaluation of the soils and sites, and records his or her analysis on a field card without consulting teammates or their coach.

The top three scores from each team are tallied for the team winners in each region. St. Anthony’s team scores were 947 for homesite evaluation and 568 for land judging.

Despite their success, none of the St. Anthony Dirt Club members plan to pursue careers in soils or agriculture.

Dodson is heading to the University of Pacific in Stockton, Calif., as an undeclared major. DeFeliccia says he wants to be a novelist, while MacLeod is considering engineering. (Fernandez was in a golf competition Monday and wasn’t available for comment.)

The students said they found the competition to be worthwhile.

“I learned a lot more about dirt than I thought was possible,” Dodson said.

“It’s taught me a different aspect of science that even if I’m not going to pursue it, I found it interesting and it could be helpful to me in the future,” DeFeliccia said.

“It was exciting to be a part of and I would like to go back,” said MacLeod.

Contest rules do not allow national winners to compete in two consecutive years.

MacLeod and DeFeliccia said they would help next year’s St. Anthony team prepare for contests and then hopefully get the opportunity to compete again in their senior year.

• Claudine San Nicolas can be reached at claudine@mauinews.com.