CHARLES TOWN, W.Va. — A family vacation and an elementary school class project have shaped the future of a young lady from Jefferson County.
Anna Sedlock is a recent graduate of Washington High School and a standout performer on her school’s softball team. The team made it all the way to the state high school softball tournament in South Charleston, but fell short of the title. With that in her rearview mirror, Anna has her sites set on bigger things.
“I plan to pursue a degree in wildlife biology with an emphasis on aquatic biology,” said Anna in a recent conversation for West Virginia Outdoors.
She’ll pursue the degree a long way from home at the University of Montana in Missoula, MT.
“We went on a trip to Yellowstone National Park a couple of years ago and on a whim we visited the campus and I just loved it there,” she explained. “I just loved that there was so much opportunity there to do research and work with faculty members.”
Anna’s burning desire for fisheries research can be traced back to her 7th grade teacher, Mrs. Lacomie at St. John’s Elementary School in Frederick, Maryland.
“She helped me figure out what I wanted to do in science and she really inspired me,” said Anna.
Specifically it was the Trout in the Classroom project which lit Anna’s fire.
“It was the best experience. I got to work on it in the 7th grade and my teacher let me come back and work on it again in the 8th grade the next year too,” she said.
Trout in the Classroom is a program run by volunteers with Trout Unlimited. T-U volunteers provided classrooms with eggs, equipment, and guidance to hatch trout fry, raise them to fingerling size, and participate in a field trip to release them into a local stream. The program was created to educate students about trout and conservation. Anna’s discovery is exactly why the program exists.
“It was that moment I knew that I just loved fish. That was the whole starting point of this trout exploration thing so I really do appreciate what they’re doing at Trout Unlimited,” she said.
Anna parlayed her curiosity and excitement into high school partnerships with professors and researchers at nearby Shepherd University and the U.S. Geological Survey.
“We were working on a project to test stream health and see if it could sustain brook trout and other fish. On a local stream I was working with Dr. Hitt from the USGS in Inwood. We were surveying temperatures, substrate sizes, coverage of sunlight and shade. We were trying to see if our streams were healthy enough for these fish,” she explained.
This summer she will participate in research and work with West Virginia State Parks and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s federal trout hatchery in White Sulphur Springs.
Anna hoped to use her degree to make aquatic research her life’s work.
“I want to do research. That’s what I love and there are just so many options and opportunities with this degree,” she said.
It seems ironic that although she is eaten up with fish biology, she’s actually never been fishing. Anna’s dad is an avid angler, but somehow she said she had never gone with him for whatever reason. She plans to remedy the void soon.
“I do. I definitely want to get into fishing,” she laughed.
She’ll have plenty of opportunities under the Big Sky of Montana.