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OM team goes to nationals in first year
By Katherine M., Red Team

Towards the beginning of the year, a sheet of paper went out in every science class in every grade. It was promoting a program that provides difficult creative problem-solving opportunities.

The paper called for students to join Odyssey of the Mind, an educational program that involves teamwork, wits, planning, organization and most importantly, the ability to think outside of the box.

Odyssey of the Mind is a program that takes place all over the world. In order for a group to participate, their school or community sponsor their registration. It took a lot of work to set it up so that Middlesex could join.

Mrs. Mainiero, a sixth grade science teacher, coordinated the school end. “I did the first little bit of organizing and planning, the paperwork, and put together the teams and parent coaches. Then the teams got started...they did all the real work,” Mrs. Mainiero told us.

MMS field two teams at the state competition and both did an excellent job. Middlesex's ‘Out of the Box Balsa' did an amazing job placing second and qualifying for the World Finals in East Lansing , Michigan . The odds of a first time team going to World's were .2%. And Middlesex was that .2%.

What the team had to actually do was extremely difficult. There are three parts to the competition: long term problem, performance, and spontaneous problem.

Students worked on the long-term problem after school over a period of months. Their task was to build an original structure out of balsa wood, which is the size of chopsticks but with the strength of a toothpick. The structure had to be less than 18 grams in weight, which is less than 3 or 4 paper clips. It also had to fit inside a box that was smaller than the structure. In the beginning the group experimented with geometric shapes to see which was the strongest. In the end, their box was able to hold an enormous weight of 72 pounds.

For the performance, two team members had to assemble the box. Meanwhile, the other five had to perform an original play and song. It also had to include special effects (which they achieved by making a glowing wooden horse among other things.)

For the spontaneous problem, the team members sat in an enclosed room with the judges. There were three kinds of problems for spontaneous: verbal, hands on, or verbal hands on. Verbal, for example, would bring up a question like this: Name things that come in two's. Points were given for creativity; you gain more points for responses like ‘toucan, parakeet, tulip' than for ‘eyes, ears, feet'. Creativity is one of the most important aspects of the program, and of course it's what being “spontaneous” is all about.

The competing students were Ali McGarey, Lila Sullivan, Lily Saffa, Tanner Shea, Megan Gregory, Aastha Narilla, and Caroline Kapustynski. “It was an amazing feeling to be a part of something so big, something that went so far. I'm extremely proud of my teammates, especially because we didn't know each other beforehand,” Ali McGarey said.

The coaches were Mrs. Shea and Mrs. Saffa, who both gathered donations to help pay for the $10,000 trip to Michigan State University . By the end of World's, the team placed 42 nd out of 62 teams from all around the globe.