The NIU Clean Snowmobile Team is doing its part to help the environment.

The team was named the “Rookie of the Year” at the SAE Clean Snowmobile Challenge in Houghton, Mich., on March 10-15.

Treasurer Matt Davis said the challenge is for students to modify a snowmobile for better exhaust and noise emissions, while improving its performance characteristics. The long-term goal is to make snowmobiling cleaner for the environment.

For this year’s competition, the team had to convert their current snowmobile to use E85 ethanol.

“Basically, we put a 2007 engine into our old sled and did a lot of mechanical engineering stuff and converted it to E85,” Davis said.

Davis said the team was second in objective handling, third in oral presentation and were one of four teams to make the 100-mile endurance race during the competition.

Seventeen different schools were involved in the challenge, including teams from Canada and the University of Wisconsin.

Along with Davis, Ben Nichols, Ben Obenauf and Bryan Venhorst made up the team, which has received a number of Engineering Excellence Awards, including a first place in the Mechanical Engineering Department and the grand prize for best college in the engineering field. Awards were given by the Engineering and Technology Alumni Society.

Davis said the team is still looking members to compete in next year’s competition, which they are already beginning to prepare for.