Local Odyssey team earns 5th place in contest
Experience and extra effort led the Gowan Science Academy Odyssey of the Mind team to a fifth-place tie in the world-level competition in Iowa last weekend.
“Their doing so well is a testament to their work and wanting to do more hours,” of practice, said Alicia Boelts, one of the team’s coaches whose daughter is on the team.
The team, which is comprised of one second-grader, two fourth-graders and four fifth-graders, was one of three Yuma teams competing in the world-level competition. The other two teams were from Yuma Catholic High School and a community team called the East Valley Cre8tive Kids.
Odyssey of the Mind is about creative problem solving, with different problems (or scenarios) each year. There are four divisions, from elementary level to college, and five problems from which to choose. This year’s competition boasted 837 teams of seven students each, with 33 states represented and 13 international countries.
All three teams placed well at the competition, Boelts said, with the Cre8tive Kids team placing 18th in division II and Yuma Catholic’s team placing 31st in its division.
This is the first time that any team from Yuma has placed in the top five for any problem or division, Alicia Boelts said.
The Gowan team faced some hurdles though, said fourth-grader Daisy Boelts, such as the structure breaking the day before. Emotions also ran high.
“The wood for our structure ended up weighing too much,” she said, even though the structure ended up holding 625 pounds.
The teams are scored in four different areas for this problem: how well they solved the long-term problem, weight held, style, and spontaneous, Alicia Boelts said.
Fifth-graders Rosaline Pond and Kristin Mitchell explained that the problem they chose (Problem 4 called “Animal House”) required a structure to hold weight (and animal food). In Yuma’s dry climate, the balsa wood structure weighed in under the required 15 grams, but in the wet Michigan air, the wood expanded, and the team was penalized 10 points for being overweight.
The Gowan team scored high in other aspects of the competition, including their eight-minute skit and in their problem-solving, Alicia Boelts noted.
“Gowan Science Academy is truly producing students that are Worldquality problem solvers. They scored the highest in their group at 76.68 for their long term problem portion, roughly 12 points above the 1st place winners from China,” Coach Boelts said. “This is an amazing accomplishment, and these students worked hard at solving and presenting their solution to the problem they were given.”
The Gowan team actually tied for fifth with a team from Blytheville, Arkansas; just 10 points from winning third place, according to the official standings.
Second-grader Melanie Moore is new to the team, but the older students have competed before. Rosaline Pond has been on the team for two years; Mitchell and Jonathan Mark Hensen are in their fourth year on the team, and Taeler Cullom and Devlyn Reese have three years of experience in Odyssey.
Each student has a job to do on the team, whether it is writing the skit’s script, building the structures (there were 15 total built and tested), making props and practicing, practicing and more practicing, said Melissa Reese, the team’s co-coach.
The Gowan team started four years ago, Alicia Boelts said, and seeing how the kids have changed over the years has been neat to watch.
“Odyssey just gets your mind working and you become much more and more creative,” Pond observed. Pond and Daisy Boelts actually tested the structures with a box crusher at a local business.
“Since starting Odyssey four years ago, I can say I have a new perspective on everything like problemsolving and like working with people,” Mitchell said. “It’s really life-changing.”