THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 3, 1994 TAG: 9406010107
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 02B EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHARLENE CASON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940603 LENGTH: Medium
The upper school's six-member Odyssey of the Mind Team, or ``OMERS,'' has taken its rendition of the classic Greek play on the road - the road to national competition in Ames, Iowa this week.
{REST} The team beat out 89 others in the Tidewater Regional Contest, for a first place, in March. Then, in late April, the high school students won the state competition, making them the only team from the region to go on to the world challenge this week.
``I've been doing this since the second grade, and I can't imagine not doing it,'' said ninth-grader Katie Fisher, who plays the armor maker Hephaestus in the play. ``People at world have a real positive attitude; it's not like there's a real competition there. We're all just there to have fun.''
The youngsters have had fun creating their play, but they've also worked hard on it since September, they said. Odyssey of the Mind guidelines are difficult and precise. Students are given a drama, music or physics problem to solve, and the challenge is to solve it as creatively as possible.
Those entering the drama competition were instructed to choose a specific chapter from The Iliad, and somehow relate it to modern life. The Cape Henry team chose a scene in which Patrocius borrows Achilles' armor and is killed wearing it; then Achilles has to obtain some new armor.
The three girls and three boys brought Al Capone and his mother into their translation, correlating the gangster's search for an armored car and the ancient Greek's search.
Puns, accents, mechanized scenery and scavenged props make the brief performance creative and comical.
Achilles' mother, played by ninth-grader Stacie Crain, tells him, ``You have to go into battle and you don't have a thing to wear!'' Later, as Al Capone's mother, she says, ``What are you going to do now? Your car's all shot up.''
The team formed at the beginning of this school year and met once or twice a week. Two coaches, parents Susan Fisher and Lynette Crain, helped the team, but rules limited their involvement.
``We can teach them skills and knowledge, such as sewing, but we can't help them. They really become scavengers, looking for common things to put to unique uses,'' said Fisher.
``The whole root of the contest is creative problem solving,'' she said.
Crain added that searching for props and costume materials teaches the students ``poise with adults. We can't tell them where to get things, so they have to solve problems within themselves.''
The team was limited to an $80 budget, and the performance could not be more than eight minutes long.
Team member Brian Walker, an 11th-grader who plays Al Capone, said working on the project taught him ``to compromise, and to always reach for a more creative way to approach problems.''
Other team members agreed that, in coming to a common solution, friendship and respect play an important role.
``We think of ourselves as OMERS, a tiny bit thespians, a little bit comedians and big players with hot glue guns,'' said senior Sarah Balcom.
by CNB