Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Two area schools will compete in Orlando, Fla., next month in the international Odyssey of the Mind contest.
Triton Elementary and a combination team from Edgewood Middle School and Washington Elementary won their state divisions Saturday and will go on to world competition May 27-30.
Four hundred teams competed at the state level, said Marcia Keyser, a coach for the Triton team. There were 13 teams in the junior high division, she said.
Ann VanDuyne, a coach for the Edgewood/Washington team, said each team is given a selection of five problems, and they can choose one of those problems to be their project for the competition.
For example, the five kids on the Edgewood/Washington team had a problem called "Morph Magic." The guidelines required that they develop a humorous play in which a human character would "morph" into an animal and, in animal form, would learn something from the animal world that would solve a problem in the human world. It also required the kids to use functional engineering skills to make a device become another device.
Triton's team had to use an individual from the past as a mentor in making a commercial to advertise a healthful food. The performance had to include a commercial that used original music and food packaging, and had to have a discussion of the product's nutritional benefits.
Keyser said Odyssey of the Mind rules require the kids to develop the ideas, write the music, and make the costumes and props. All of the props must fit into a specific space, must be able to be assembled in eight minutes or less, and the materials used cannot exceed $100.
The competition at Orlando will be challenging and exciting, Keyser said, since the kids will be competing against students from almost all states and 25 foreign countries.
"But it's an opportunity you can't pass up," she said.
VanDuyne said she has coached OM teams for five years, and this is the first time a team has ever made it beyond the state competition.
"The kids are very excited," she said.
Besides the problem they are required to solve, VanDuyne said, the kids also must take part in a spontaneous competition, where even their coaches may not accompany them.
"They're taken into a room ... and at regionals they were given idioms and they had to create stories to explain how those idioms came into being," she said.
For example, the judges may give the students an expression such as "the whole nine yards" and the students would, as quickly as possible, make up stories that would explain where that expression came from. The team with the most answers is the most successful.
"And there's no way they know ahead of time what it's going to be," VanDuyne said of the spontaneous competition.
Both teams will be doing everything they can think of to raise funds for the Orlando trip before the end of May. Keyser said the trip will cost approximately $400-$500 per student, not counting coaches and transportation.
Odyssey of the Mind is a worldwide creative problem-solving competition that involves students from kindergarten through college.
Keyser said the kids love OM competition because "this is one thing where they're totally in charge - there's nobody telling them what to do, other than the parameters they have to follow."
Triton's team includes: Tim Speicher, Ryan Schori, Josh Disher, Mark Smith, Traci Wells, Kylie Edmonds and Betsy Price. Coaches are Marcia Keyser and Linda Bowdler.
The Edgewood/Washington team comprises: Erin Elliott, Kaitie Vanderpool and Adam VanDuyne, Edgewood, and Elisabeth Kline and Mike Block, Washington. Coach is Ann VanDuyne.
