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Odyssey of the Mind Team Heads to State
Hayden Parsley,
Hannah Price
Guest reporters
As the Odyssey of the Mind team advances to state, the competition steps up a notch. Competition and practice time intensifies as the day approaches.
“So much personality and the creativity collide,” sophomore team member Isai Martinez said.
The team, consists of Martinez, along with sophomores Evan White, Matthew Greene, Sean McDermott, Will Lynde, and Austin Stephens. The team has came far since their first year of competing as eighth-graders.
Odyssey of the Mind, a creativity competition, is not considered work at all for these six friends,
“We hang out and make jokes!’’ Lynde said.
“We have a set built for practice with a chalk board and everything,” Martinez said.
The regional competition that the team competed in on Sat. Feb. 27, was a cake walk compared to previous tournaments the boys have competed in.
Since there were only two teams in their same category, Discovered Treasures, they only competed with the Harmony School of Excellence.
Not only did the OM team win 1st place with a grand total of 350 points, over the Harmony School of Excellence who had a total of 300, the team also walked home with another medal for their superb creativity.
The OM team was able to automatically continue to state which will be held Sat. April 17th at Spring Woods High School.
Preparations will begin, making jokes and receiving tips from their Spartan Time sponsor, Mr. Christian Holmes.
“Criteria can be taken in unlimited ways so it is hard to decide what idea to go with,” Lynde said.
The competition composed of two tasks: long-term and spontaneous.
In the long term, team members have to perform a prepared skit within their category with other various criteria.
The spontaneous competition could be out of the verbal, non verbal, or problem-solving categories.
An example a non verbal spontaneous, a team was given many different items and the team had to stand 10 feet away from balloons and they had to pop them.
“We have even had to sight-read before in spontaneous” Greene said. Spontaneous only allows five team mates to participate.
“Spontaneous is so random. There is no way to prepare for it,” Martinez said. “One of the hardest thing is picking 5 people to participate in spontaneous because we have no idea what we will have to do at that point, so one person has to sit out,”
It is the team’s third year as an OM group, and the boys are trying to live up to their previous victories which includes getting a perfect score at state and placing third in World.
“It was so cool getting a perfect score because, well, it’s not impossible, but it’s pretty much unheard of. It doesn’t happen,” Greene said.
The team is proud of their strong start, but nervous about what lies ahead. “The high school competitions are so much harder than the middle school competitions. It kicks it up a notch.
In middle school, the judges just want you to be creative, but in high school, you have to not only be creative, but you have to stay within certain criteria for our skit which can only be eight minutes!” Greene said.
World is a great experience for the team.
“Its fun going to World because you meet so many interesting people from all around the world.,” Lynde said. The OM team met people from China!
Last year their OM team came in 27th place at World.
Due to that being their first year with the high-schoolers, the team did well, but plan to step up their game for the upcoming World competition , which is being held at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Mi.
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