A team from the University of Guelph won the 2023 Weed Science Olympics in Union City, Tennessee.
Team members Noelle Adams, Stephanie Fletcher, Curtis Vanrooy and Joe Rastapkevicius won both the undergrad division and the overall team competition.
Vanrooy also won the Grad Farmer Problem competition.
“Based off of our results, we all know that we are very capable and there’s nothing you really can’t do,” said Vanrooy, “because as long as you work hard and learn, there’s nothing you can’t do.”
Speaking about his individual win, he said “you’ll have a person talking to you and there’ll be an unknown problem, and you have to ask them a variety of questions which they will answer and then the goal is to get to the bottom of the problem and get it correctly, and then make them a recommendation based on the problem.”
Speaking about the team win, he said “we’re all 2023 graduates, which means we have all taken the same classes through undergrad and we’re all friends so it made it really easy as a team to learn and practice together because we’ve been doing that anyways through our undergrad.”
They were coached by weed science professor Dr. Francois Tardif.
