GFMS Odyssey of the Mind team wins regional competition

composite picture of six students holding trophy plus two students with mustaches smiling
The winning Middle School team included seventh-graders CJ Lunt and Kendall Gross, and sixth-graders Brady Gross, Gavin Rittenhouse, Emma Canale, and Joe Frankenfeld.

A Glens Falls Odyssey of the Mind team won their division in this year’s regional competition! The winning Middle School team included seventh-graders CJ Lunt and Kendall Gross, and sixth-graders Brady Gross, Gavin Rittenhouse, Emma Canale, and Joe Frankenfeld.

“These middle-schoolers were dedicated to writing a clever skit,” said coach Liz Gross. “They had great props, interesting characters and their skit was hilarious. I am so proud of how hard they worked and how much fun they had.”

Odyssey of the Mind is an international STEAM-based program in which students work in teams and use their creativity, knowledge, and skill to develop solutions to problems that range from the technical to the structural to performance.

At the Region 6 tournament at Queensbury MS on March 9th, teams competed to show their solutions to one of five long-term problems, and each had to be completed in under 8 minutes, start to finish. Each team was also challenged with a “spontaneous problem,” which they had to solve on the spot.

six students in costumes and with a set performing in a gym
The GFMS Odyssey team performs their creative skit during Regionals on March 8, 2019.

In this year’s challenge, the GFMS team needed to “take a cue from nature in this problem where they create and build a team-made mechanical creature that hides in plain sight. The creature will change its appearance three times to avoid being detected by a Searcher Character trying to find it. The way the creature changes will be different each time! The team will create and present a performance where its creature gets into – or out of – various situations using this resourceful skill. In the end the creature will surprise everyone by changing its appearance a final time and reveal its true self.”

The Glens Falls team designed a robot that came down into Area 51, and scripted that a bounty hunter was searching for it. Their robot changed by moving, changing color, and then lighting up. “When the robot revealed its true self, it was the King of Uranus,” explained Mrs. Gross. “In order to be sent back to Uranus, it had to go into a potty portal. Their skit was funny, well put together and full of potty humor.”

“They worked incredibly hard to meet all of the requirements the long-term problem asked of them,” Mrs. Gross continued. “They even used their knowledge of circuits to have one of their backdrops light up.”

elementary students in al ine smiling with GF OM t-shirts
JH’s Odyssey of the Mind team included Ollie Farry, Liam O’Neill, Leighton Morency, Daniel Heath, Michael Heath, Henry Austin-Avon, and Jack Reed.

Two other teams from Glens Falls also competed in Odyssey of the mind challenges.

The OM team of Zoey Moon, Carson Brown, Rebecca McPhee, Nick Marsh, Nick Candido, Fiona Poole, and Aubrie Spencer created a creature called a Frostember, which hatched from an egg during their performance. “Their performance was enthusiastic, creative, and energetic, and their solution received much praise from judges and audience members alike,” said coach Emily McPhee.

The primary team of Ollie Farry, Liam O’Neill, Leighton Morency, Daniel Heath, Michael Heath, Henry Austin-Avon, and Jack Reed tackled the challenge to present a museum. They created a Museum of Minecraft in which the artist gets sucked into a racing game and needs to beat the game to get out.

Congratulations to each of the OM’ers in this year’s tournament!