Yuma teams compete at Odyssey of Mind finals
Four Yuma-area Odyssey of the Mind teams competed in the World Finals this past weekend in Michigan.
One team from Yuma Catholic High School scored 18th on problem three and the second YC team took 20th on problem 1, said Adele Hennig, who coaches the teams at the school. The community team coach she coaches, the East Valley Cre8tive Kids, placed 26th in its division; while Gowan Science Academy placed 19th out of 36 teams its division.
“It was a really great experience for all the Yuma kids,” she said.
The teams did not come home empty-handed, though, Hennig noted.
“Because it’s so expensive for the foreign teams to get to the United States, and the competition is only four days, many international teams stay over,” Hennig said.
The company that runs the OTM competitions “buddies up” international teams with U.S. country teams; a team from Warsaw, Poland, came “home” with one of the Yuma teams to experience the desert Southwest.
The Polish team, which consists of seven students, a teacher, a parent and the school’s headmaster, is staying in Yuma for a week, Hennig said.
“We have all kinds of things for them to do,” she said, including a painting night at a local art co-op, which reduced the fees so the students could attend.
This year’s OTM competition featured 833 teams of seven from 33 U.S. states and 15 countries from around the globe and 470 volunteers. Next year’s World Finals will be at Iowa State University the last weekend in May.
The timing of the World event often takes graduating seniors away from their ceremonies, Henning said, as she had one senior on her team who could not attend his school’s festivities.
“So he got to graduate at the World Finals, at their ceremony,” she said. “That was really cool for him.”