State Champions

For the third year in a row, an Odyssey of the Mind (OM) team from Leland Public School has won a state championship and will advance to the OM world finals competition.

Thousands of children, parents and school officials from all over Michigan gathered Saturday on the campuses of Northwestern Michigan College and Traverse City Central High School for the OM state finals.

Seven OM teams from four Leelanau County schools advanced to the state finals following a regional competition in Traverse City last month. In all, 152 OM teams from dozens of Michigan school districts participated in the state finals. Thirty-four of the 152 Michigan teams will advance to the world finals.

Thousands of teams from throughout the U.S. and 25 foreign countries are expected to participate in the World Finals this year. In 2005 the world finals were held at the University of Colorado in Boulder; in 2006 they were held at the University of Iowa in Ames.

This year, for the first time ever, the OM World Finals will be held at Michigan State University in East Lansing. OM has been in existence in Michigan for 27 years.

A team coached by Leland parent Jenni Henderson, and consisting of several of the same children who competed in the 2005 and 2006 OM world finals, will travel to East Lansing this year for the May 23-26 event. Henderson’s assistant coach this year is Leland parent Neal Fellows.

The state championship team consists of Leland Public School fourth graders Anna Bahle and Gunnar Carlson, and fifth graders Autumn Decker, Christian Doran, Austin Fellows and Liam Stevenson.

Odyssey of the Mind is a creative problem solving competition that calls on youngsters to solve a “long term” problem and a “spontaneous” problem that generally involves quick responses in a word association game. The children work on their “long term” problems over a period of several weeks. The solution to the “long term” problem often involves the performance of an original skit accompanied by the construction or demonstration of a mechanical device.

The Leland team competed in Division One, for third through fifth graders. The “long term” problem they chose to solve was called “Out of the Box Balsa.”

The problem involved designing, building and testing a structure made of wood and glue that would balance and support as much weight as possible. The structure had to be designed to fit inside a small box before being completely assembled. At the same time, children performed a skit about a lumberjack and some beavers that included special effects.

The Leland team’s wooden structure ended up supporting 648 pounds before it collapsed. The team with the next highest weight total was in Division Three – for high schoolers, whose structure managed to hold only 283 pounds.

The Leland team also won a special “OMer” award at the state finals for “exemplifying the spirit and philosophy of Odyssey of the Mind…” The team was recognized for quickly remanufacturing some of their costumes and props after several items turned up missing from a storage area at school just days before the state competition.

Another Leelanau County team, from the Interlochen Pathfinder School in Greilickville, participated in the “Out of the Box” competition. The Pathfinder team took fifth place out of 10 teams competing in Division One in that problem.

Three teams from Glen Lake also participated in the state finals. A Division Two team from Glen Lake took sixth place out of 16 teams solving a problem titled “Around the World in Eight Minutes.” A Division One team from Glen Lake took seventh place of 11 teams solving the same problem. Another Glen Lake team, in Division Two, solved a problem called “The Large and Small of It,” taking sixth place out of seven teams competing.

A Division One team from the St. Mary School in Lake Leelanau solved a problem called “I’m Only Thinking of You” and took 12th place out of 16 teams participating. A Division Two team from Leland also solved the “I’m Only Thinking of You” problem and placed ninth out of 15 teams competing.