Two teams of students from Leland Public School won state championships in Odyssey of the Mind (OM) competition Saturday in Kentwood and will advance to the OM World Finals to be held at the University of Maryland on May 31.

LELAND STUDENTS react to an announcement that they won the Odyssey of the Mind state championship on Saturday and begin running to the front of an assembly in the East Kentwood High School gymnasium to accept their gold medals.

Both teams won a regional competition on March 8 at Traverse City West Junior High School that involved more than 80 OM teams from dozens of schools, churches and home school groups.

Saturday’s state championships at East Kentwood High School near Grand Rapids involved 152 OM teams, 184 adult coaches and 1,011 students from throughout Michigan. The World Finals event next month in College Park, Md., is expected to involve more than 800 OM teams from 30 states and more than a dozen foreign countries.

DIVISION ONE champions coached by Neal and
Deb Fellows included third graders Olivia
Fellows, Remi Masse and Abigail Stroh,
and fourth graders Elijah Berg, Brennan
Flohe, Jamie McFarlane and Danielle
Merwin.

The titles mark the fourth consecutive year that a team from Leland Public School has advanced to the OM World Finals. Coached last year by parents Jenni Henderson and Neal Fellows, that team took sixth place in the World Finals as a Division One team – the youngest division.

This year, a team of seven fifth and sixth graders is competing in Division Two, coached by Henderson with her husband John Henderson. The new Division One team, consisting of seven third and fourth graders, is coached by Fellows and his wife Deborah Wyatt Fellows.

The Leland Division Two team includes fifth graders Anna Bahle, Gunnar Carlson, David Grzebienik and Tristan Peabody; and sixth graders Autumn Decker, Christian Doran and Liam Stevenson.

The Leland Division One team includes fourth graders Elijah Berg, Brennan Flohe, Jamie McFarlane and Danielle Merwin, plus third graders Olivia Fellows, Remi Masse and Abigail Stroh.

DIVISION TWO champions coached by Jenni
Henderson included sixth graders Christian
Doran, Liam Stevenson and Autumn Decker,
and fifth graders Anna Bahle, Gunnar Carlson,
David Grzbienik and Tristan Peabody.

Each year, OM allows children to choose one of several “long-term problems” to solve. The winning Leland teams have selected the most technically difficult problems that require them to design and build a structure of balsa wood and glue that bears weight.

The students are scored on how much weight the structure holds before it collapses, as well as the creativity they display in a skit they perform with costumes and props while weights are being applied to the structure. In addition, teams are graded on their solution to a separate “spontaneous” problem, sometimes involving a word game, a “hands-on” problem, or a combination of verbal and physical puzzles.

This year a “Tee Structure” problem required that the structure support golf balls coming in direct contact with a pressure board that is used to apply weight to the structure. Students designed, built and tested – or “crushed” – dozens of the balsa wood structures in the weeks before the competition.

In addition to refining their structures and performances in the coming weeks, Leland’s OM teams plan to hold a series of fundraising events to help cover the cost of their upcoming trip to Maryland.