PHOTO #1: The University of Houston-Victoria teams who volunteered at the Keep Victoria Beautiful Fall Sweep, including the soccer team shown here, earned the Most Spirited award.
PHOTO #2: The volunteer team led by Jon Keene and Zach Cornwell earned the Most Trash Picked Up by a Team award at the Keep Victoria Beautiful Fall Sweep.
PHOTO #3: An “alien spaceship” found by the volunteer team led by Tiffany Totah earned first place for Most Unusual Item at the Keep Victoria Beautiful Fall Sweep.
PHOTO #4: A toy alien found in Ethel Lee Tracy Park looked like it could fit inside the “spaceship” found on Loop 463.
PHOTO #5: The UHV softball team earned second place for Most Unusual Item and was one of the winners of the Most Spirited Award at the Keep Victoria Beautiful Fall Sweep.
PHOTO #6: A puzzle piece found by the volunteer team led by Zach Wendel earned third place for Most Unusual Item at the Keep Victoria Beautiful Fall Sweep.
Keep Victoria Beautiful volunteers picked up 275 bags of trash at 20 locations during the citywide Fall Sweep on Sept. 9, but the amount of trash they picked up wasn’t the only thing out of this world.
Volunteers picking up trash on Loop 463 found a strange object that looked like a small spaceship. They determined that it might actually be a broken part of a fence, but the mystery deepened when KVB Executive Director Christy Youker and Environmental Services Director Darryl Lesak found a tiny green alien in Ethel Lee Tracy Park. Could the alien have been ejected when its ship crash-landed on the Loop?
Whatever the explanation, unusual finds like these are just part of what makes Keep Victoria Beautiful’s cleanups so fun and rewarding.
At the citywide cleanups, volunteers can earn awards for picking up the most trash, finding unusual items and showing their community spirit. Volunteers at the 2023 Fall Sweep earned the following awards:
- Most Trash Picked Up by a Team: Team 8 (led by Jon Keene and Zach Cornwell)
- Most Spirited: The University of Houston-Victoria teams: Baseball, softball, golf, soccer and Student Affairs
- Most Unusual Item:
- 1st place: An “alien spaceship,” found by Team 1 (led by Tiffany Totah)
2nd place: Cheech & Chong boxer shorts, found by the UHV softball team- 3rd place: A puzzle piece, found by Team 7 (led by Zach Wendel)
The honorees will be formally recognized during Keep Victoria Beautiful’s annual volunteer appreciation event in November.
What’s next
Keep Victoria Beautiful’s next cleanup will be a neighborhood cleanup at 9 a.m. Oct. 21 in the Will Rogers Park area of the Queen City neighborhood.
To register for the Queen City cleanup, or to sign up to be notified of future cleanups, visit www.victoriatx.gov/kvb.