Story originally printed in the Coulee News or online at www.couleenews.com
Published - Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Bangor’s Odyssey of the Mind takes a trip like no other
 It's amazing what duct tape and imagination can create. The above group might look like space aliens -- which was the point -- but they are actually members of Bangor's Odyssey of the Mind team in competition at the University of Maryland. From the left, they are: Gabe Olson, Tanya Shawley, Jarod Heuer (in the wall), Daniel Browne and Savanna Olson. Contributed photo |
For five Bangor High School students Daniel Browne, Jarod Heuer, Gabe Olson, Savanna Olson and Tanya Shawley a recent Odyssey of the Mind competition trip to Maryland was an odyssey in more ways than one.
Despite delays, missed trains and an unexpected equipment disqualification, the five persevered and ended up having a great experience as they connected with fellow students from the United States and all over the world.
According to Laurie Olson, the team’s coach, the wonderful thing about Odyssey of the Mind is its inclusiveness. “What’s neat is that anybody can do it,” she said. “You don’t have to be good in athletics, math, literature or music. The competition uses all kinds of skills, from building props to acting in skits, to making costumes, to ....”
Odyssey of the Mind is a creative problem-solving competition with competition on a local, state and international level Wisconsin’s statewide competition was held in Holmen this year. Team members work together to solve a problem picked months in advance. They present their solution to the problem at a competition where they must also generate spontaneous answers to a different problem that they have not seen before.
Another unique thing about the OM competitions is that adult help is taboo, according to Olson, who has been coaching OM competitions for 11 years. “No adult assistance is allowed you can’t even touch things,” she said. “If questions reveal adult help, penalties are given. You have to stand back and let them fail or succeed on their own.”
The Bangor group’s problem this year involved a combination of two popular activities a road rally and a sporting event. The team had to design, build and operate an original vehicle, then drive it in a road rally that had four checkpoints. At each checkpoint the vehicle competed in a sports-related event. The team also had to come up with an original theme for its road rally, and theirs was space-alien-related.
Building your own vehicle would seem to be a daunting task, but it didn’t faze Browne and Gabe Olson, the team’s “mechanics.” After deciding on the problem they would tackle last fall, they begin designing the vehicle and spending lots of time on its construction. “They spent like four months working on it in our garage,” said Savanna Olson of Browne and her brother’s dedication. For Christmas last year Gabe even got his own welder.
Browne said he enjoyed the challenge. “We had to build a vehicle to perform five tasks, all of them mechanical and it had to be battery-operated,” he said. “It was pretty fun. It definitely made you think you had to use your brain.”
The vehicle Olson and Browne built from scratch ended up being about the size of a riding lawn mower. Meanwhile, Heuer was building the props for the sports-related part of the road rally and Savanna Olson and Shawley were making costumes.
After the team learned they had qualified for the international competition in Maryland, things hit a bit of a snag. In previous years Bangor’s OM teams have traveled by bus with other area schools and shared the cost. This year, however, quite a few of the other schools chose to fly. That made the cost of chartering a bus to Maryland prohibitive. The school district eventually settled on train travel via Amtrak as the cheapest way to get the team to its destination.
The OM team left La Crosse on Friday, May 30 and arrived in Washington, D.C. the next afternoon. They traveled with the team from Blair-Taylor. From Washington they took the subway and buses to College Park and the University of Maryland, where they stayed in the dorms . “We were three hours late, getting there just in time for the opening ceremonies,” coach Olson said.
With 847 teams from 40 states and 45 countries, it was a little like a miniature United Nations or Olympics. Each state issues its own pins and, just like at the Olympics, participants are eager to trade. “Pin trading is really big at that level it’s how kids meet each other,” Laurie said.
The Bangor and Blair-Taylor teams stayed in a University of Maryland dorm along with teams from West Virginia and Connecticut. “That first night the kids stayed up all night talking and bonding I wish they’d have talked a little more during daylight hours,” Olson said with a laugh.
The competition ended on Tuesday so there were three opportunities to get a good night’s sleep and Shawley and Savanna Olson apparently missed all of them. “The worst thing about the trip was probably not getting any sleep I stayed up every night,” Shawley said.
When the team was ready for its competition, they found another obstacle in the way. “Our battery was lead-based,” Savanna Olson said. That was against the rules, so it cost the team 20 points, even though the infraction had not been caught at the state level. Forced to improvise without the battery, they did their best.
“The judges were very impressed how the kids handled it,” coach Olson said.
“They told us the score doesn’t matter because the whole idea is how you get there.’ They commended the team on how they kept their cool and problem solved,” she said. Even with the 20-point penalty, Bangor came in 28th out the 45 teams in the division that tackled the road rally problem.
As it turned out, there were more hurdles on the way home. “We were delayed eight hours because of flooded tracks. We were supposed to leave Chicago for Bangor at 2 p.m. and get here around 7:30 p.m. But we missed our train and got in to Chicago about 7:30 instead,” Laurie said.
At that point, the Bangor and Blair-Taylor school districts conferred and agreed to charter a bus to bring their teams home. The group finally made it back to Bangor around 1 a.m. Despite the troubles, it was obvious that all the O.M. participants felt it was a worthwhile experience as they learned a lot and made plenty of new friends.
“Yeah, I think I’d do it again,” Daniel said. One thing is for sure: Next year’s competition is in Ames, Iowa, so chances are good it won’t be quite the odyssey it was this year.
All stories copyright 2006 Coulee News and other attributed sources.