Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 10, 1991 TAG: 9103100126
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
The Dalton Intermediate School team was shooting tennis balls at various targets at Saturday's Odyssey of the Mind competition at Virginia Tech.
And for the most part, they were missing.
"We were nervous," Meghan Cropper explained afterward. She was wearing a diving suit.
"Bad shooting. Nervousness," said Amy Chung, who was trying to look like a fish.
The final tally told the awful truth: seven shots made out of 40 attempts.
But Dennis Cropper - Meghan's father and coach of the Radford-based team - quickly put it into perspective.
"They had fun," he said.
There was a lot of that going around.
The regional Odyssey of the Mind competition brought some 1,400 schoolchildren together on this campus, which was emptied by spring break. Also present were coaches, parents, brothers and sisters, friends and 105 judges.
The schoolchildren - who came from public and private schools in a 14-county swath of Western Virginia - tossed Frisbees and played on the drill field. They strummed guitars and they lounged around.
But what they did mostly was compete by shooting tennis balls, driving battery-powered cars or re-enacting the destruction of Pompeii - in one case to the music of Elvis Presley.
But a little weirdness was to be expected.
This, after all, was a contest of creativity.
Begun in 1978 in New Jersey, Odyssey of the Mind is meant to promote "divergent thinking," according to an Odyssey brochure. The competition is sponsored by the OM Association Inc. and financed partly by International Business Machines.
"Students learn to work with others as a team," the brochure says. "They develop their creative skills through problem-solving and independent thinking. Hence, the Odyssey of the Mind Program makes learning fun."
The judges are volunteers.
"It's creative problem-solving," said Odyssey's state director, SusanNunemaker of Chesterfield. "That's about as succinct as you can get without seeing it."
Seeing is encouraged, in fact. Except for a "spontaneous" question-and-response session in which team members are forced to think on their feet, Odyssey of the Mind is intended as spectator sport, Odyssey officials said.
Every team picks one of five problems to work on for the Odyssey competition. The problems change each year.
This year's choices were re-enacting the end of Pompeii; finding four ways to shoot a tennis ball; designing, building and driving a battery-powered vehicle; designing a balsa wood structure that would hold weight and be impacted by a billiard ball, and creating a presentation that represents a change or evolution.
Teams often work on their problem for months before the competition begins.
At the competition, each team is judged on its performance, style and responses in the question-and-response session.
There is often entertainment for the spectator.
Close to 60 teams, for example, staged brief re-enactments of the end of Pompeii - the ancient Italian city buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D.
Breckinridge Elementary School in Botetourt County was one of them. The Breckinridge Pompeii ended against a backdrop of pop music, including Elvis Presley.
As the King sang "All Shook Up," the toga-clad students did the twist. They dropped to the Burruss Hall stage one by one.
Across the drill field, Radford's Dalton Intermediate School team - which included Meghan and Amy, Katie Boor, Michelle Bishop and Sarah Argabrite - shot tennis balls in the War Memorial Gym. Many went awry, leaving spectators ducking.
The team was competing in the "Give and Go," competition, in which each team must devise four ways of knocking a tennis ball into a target.
The Radford group, which began working on the problem in November, had finally settled on a golf club, slingshot, catapult and leaf blower.
For the "style" portion, they chose a nautical theme. Their targets were a whale, a treasure chest, a beach bum and a shark. A cassette player played - respectively - whale sounds, music from the movie "Treasure Island," the '60s pop tune "Wipe Out" and the soundtrack from the movie "Jaws" as the team members shot at each target.
In addition to Amy the fish and Meghan the diver, Katie was dressed as a fisherwoman, Michelle as a mermaid and Sarah as a bathing beauty.
The competition had its bright side, even for them.
"They learned cooperation and teamwork," said Coach Cropper, who had lent the team members his tools and basement. "And to bounce back from failure."
"It's really fun," Amy said.
Odyssey of the Mind is an international contest. Some 26 of the 209 teams in Saturday's competition will go on to compete in a statewide competition to be held at Tech on April 27.
Thirteen state winners will go on to compete with teams from across the nation and several foreign countries at the Odyssey finals in Knoxville, Tenn., on May 24, 25 and 26.
by CNB