Only in its first year, the Crestview High School robotics team is quickly establishing itself as a force to be reckoned with.

Earlier this spring FRC #8788 Special Forces Ballistabots, as the team is known, was named the top rookie team in the Tallahassee region and earned a trip to the world competition in Houston that was held April 18-22.

Mike Landry made the little more than 500-mile trip from Knoxville, Tenn., to Crestview to be a German Captain in battle reenactments at Hail the Heroes at Twin Hills Park over the weekend.

Landry, a 1993 graduate of the University of Tennessee Haslam College of Business, has an important reason for participating.

The city’s Citizens Advisory Council will mark the nation’s annual April 29 Arbor Day with a tree planting at the John McMahon Environmental Center.

The council’s president said that beautifying the city is among the council’s goals.

Once called by former Mayor David Cadle “Crestview’s best kept secret,” the John McMahon Environmental Center isn’t so secret anymore. A group of nearly 30 home-schooled students and their families recently explored the center’s museum, scampered around the arboretum, and played on the equipment at the new playground.

On a sunny day in Crestview some of the brightest students at Northwood Elementary School are hard at work solving problems associated with challenges in the First Lego League Challenge Program under the watchful eye of science teacher Meredith Coleman.

HAM radios have been around for more than a century. Around the world amateur radio operators of all ages have communicated to those down the street or on another continent thousands of miles away.

Since 1978 the North Okaloosa Amateur Radio Club has been providing local citizens a place to go and grow their contacts and knowledge about radio.

For more than 30 years the Old Spanish Trail Rodeo has been entertaining cowboys and cowgirls as well as city folk that enjoy a different kind of sporting event.

Now in her eighth year as principal at Laurel Hill, Lee Martello easily recalls her proudest moment at the K-12 school nestled in the northwest corner of Okaloosa County.

Baker School principal Mike Martello knows that every high school student won’t go to college. For some it’s a matter of liking or not liking the academic setting.

With over 150 calls taken, the City of Crestview’s Animal Control Service is full steam ahead with Officer Kathryn Healey at the helm.