The Lawrence Intermediate School’s Odyssey of the Mind team may not be the best team in the world, but they certainly are in the top four.
By: Lea Kahn
The team won this honor in the Odyssey of the Mind world final competition held at the University of Maryland campus during the first week of June. The team of fourth- and fifth-graders competed against 52 teams in its division at the annual competition,.
LIS claimed its fourth state championship this year, which entitled the team to go to the finals. The team went head-to-head against teams from other states, plus a handful of European countries and Canadian provinces.
"We couldn’t believe it," Irene Tzovolos, the sixth-grade teacher who coaches the seven-member team, said of the competition results.
"We are the fourth-best team in our division," Ms. Tzovolos said. "I was ecstatic not that I was surprised. The children worked really hard. I have never seen them perform better. We were happy."
The judges members of Odyssey of the Mind teams from all over the world reviewed 11 or 12 teams per day, she said. The children watched the performances of other teams, which was helpful in giving them ideas they could use next time, she said.
The LIS team competed against teams from Germany and Poland, as well as American teams, she said. All of the skits were delivered in English. Some of the groups sang or played instruments in their skits, she said.
The Odyssey of the Mind is a creative, problem-solving competition sponsored by the Odyssey of the Mind Corp. LIS has been taking part in the contest for more than 20 years. It won the state championship in 1989, 1993, 2000 and 2001.
Each year, the Odyssey of the Mind Corp. hands out five different problems and the team chooses one. This year, the LIS team chose "Idiom Inspiration."
Using competition guidelines, the team wrote an eight-minute-long skit, Ms. Tzovolos said. The skit had to include two common idioms, and a third idiom that the children created. The team chose "at the drop of a hat" and "let the cat out of the bag" as their selected idioms, and "the ice cream is melting" as the team-created idiom.
The skit is set in Idiomopolis. It tells the story of Will Steel, who stole all of the town’s prized idioms during the Great Depression. He took all of the town’s idioms and its great humor. The ice cream is melting, the people said, meaning that everything was going downhill.
The LIS Odyssey of the Mind team members include Amisha Ahuja, Philip Annand, Jeff Budzinski, Case Jemision, Matt Oresky, Lizzie Pasquito and Kari Van Treuen.
