March 6, 2002

Odyssey puts minds to the test

More than 700 students participate in regional Odyssey of the Mind

By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
       What do shadows do for fun, when they disappear at night?
      What if fruits rose up to rebel against being eaten?
      How many pounds can a small balsa wood structure support?
      When you're an Odyssey of the Mind team, the only limits to these and more questions are your imagination.
      Traverse City East Junior High hummed with creativity Saturday as more than 700 elementary through high school students comprising 105 teams converged for the 2002 Odyssey of the Mind Regional Tournament. From early morning to late afternoon, the school's rooms and hallways overflowed with enough ideas, props and costumes to make a Hollywood screenwriter dizzy.
      Take the fruit rebellion, for example. That skit was put together by the members of the Central High School team as part of the Center Stage classics competition. The seven team members decided to merge the stories of 'Moby Dick' and 'Adrocles,' an Aesop's Fable, somehow morphing into a fruit revolution. Their script even included a 90-second battle march of the fruit as the team's mandatory dance component for that event.
      "The fruit rise up against me but they lose and find out that revenge is not sweet," said Brandon Bartkowiak, a senior at Central High School. "I end up making them into a smoothie."
      With members of Bartkowiak's team logging multiple years together, dating back to elementary school for some of them, they decided that their final hurrah as a team would be on a lighter note.
      "Because it is our last year, we wanted to have fun and make it cute," said Leslie Wilson, a senior at Central High School who has been on the team for seven years.
      Odyssey of the Mind teams gather at least weekly for months to plan and create their skits, vehicles and structures. Besides having a great time together, being an OM kid has many tangible benefits.
      "I have learned teamwork and this really helps you learn to think on your feet and stay calm under pressure," Bartkowiak said.
      "This really helps with on-the-spot thinking and creativity," added Mandy Somero, a 11th grade student at West High School, a second-year Odyssey team member.
      For every OM team testing their vehicle, showing off their structure or performing their skit, there is a coach waiting in the wings. These coaches have spent the past few months guiding their charges as they tackled the tournament's year-long problems and prepared themselves for a spontaneous problem.
      Bill Waples coaches a team from West High School and finds that it is less about coaching than staying out of their way.
      "That's one of the things about coaching high school juniors, you're not coaching, you're along for the ride," he said. "These girls would just go down to the family room and work and I would keep them supplied with pizza and pop."
      Karen Nielson, regional director of the Odyssey of the Mind Regional Tournament, is always impressed by the competitions and the kids involved. As she stood in the swirl of activity in the staging area, surrounded by handmade props and costumes of every possible description and theme, she reflected on how the kids apply themselves to the problems.
      "Some of these kids are incredible," she said. "They will do the darnedest things."
      Managing the logistics of such a huge tournament is a monumental task. Nielson makes sure to have a trained judge for every team plus as many volunteers to keep everything moving during the day-long event.
      Sometimes finding judges is an easy task: talk to OM graduates.
      Haven Wheelock spent 10 years as an Odyssey of the Mind student, from elementary school up through graduation a few years ago from West High School. Wheelock and her team even attended the world's Odyssey of the Mind competition once and the state ones a few times.
      She believes that coming back to judge is a wonderful way to give back to a program that benefited her so much.
      "It's such a good program and fun to watch what I used to do," Wheelock said. "You can't help coming back, it's just part of who I was as a kid. Some of my best friends came out of doing this."