Two Pine-Richland student Odyssey of the Mind teams qualified for the state finals following the Western Regional competition on March 2 at Keystone Oaks High School.
Pine-Richland Middle School’s seventh-grade team will travel to Swiftwater, Monroe County, to compete on April 6 with parent coach Amy Gliptis and sponsor Kathy Deal. Team members are Sophia Cosgrove, Katie Gliptis, Ellie Kaufman, Ovini Liyanage, Lydia O’Leary and Violet Zappas,
A STEAM Studio team that includes five Pine-Richland High School students — seniors Nicolai Ezolt, Mia Tucciarone, Connor Foote and Michael Lattari, and junior Jillian Uzelac — won first place in their age division and will also travel to Swiftwater for the April competition.
The high school team also was presented with the Ranatra Fusca Creativity Award, the highest of all awards given in Odyssey of the Mind, for exceptional creative thinking. The team is coached by Sarah Ezolt.
Leading up to the regional event, teams spent five months solving a long-term problem and developing an eight-minute presentation for the competition. Teams were required to spontaneously solve a problem given on the day of the competition, and were scored on their long-term problem solution, presentation style and their solution to the spontaneous problem.
The middle school’s seventh-grade team created a presentation to solve the long-term problem “Opening Night Antics,” addressing issues such as actors forgetting lines, backdrops falling unexpectedly and everything in between.
The team demonstrated how the show must go on and portrayed the opening night of an original play based on the theme of a classic story. The creative emphasis of the problem was on the performance, how the theme of the classic story was presented, the set malfunction, unexpected sound effects, team-created antic and a theater critic character.
The high school team was tasked with solving the same problem and had to write a skit to depict opening night of a play in front of a live audience that included a set malfunction and other issues to cause the play to go awry. Team members wrote a musical for their skit with original music and lyrics.
The Odyssey of the Mind program promotes creativity by challenging teams to solve divergent problems. Through team brainstorming and role playing, participants learn teamwork, the appreciation and understanding of others, and that a group is a more powerful thinking force than an individual.