World contest places Hazlet students high

Odyssey of the Mind contestants are only N.J. team to win

By elaine van develde

Staff Writer

It was a first. They won big in the state competition. They went to the world finals. And, for the first time, Hazlet students placed among the top rankers in the world Odyssey of the Mind competition at Iowa State University last weekend.

First the Hazlet students competed in the Odyssey of the Mind 2003 state competition at South Brunswick high and middle schools in April.

Five Hazlet teams comprising 35 students walked away from the state competition as winners.

From last Wednesday to Sunday, the Hazlet students competed in the Odyssey world finals in Ames, Iowa.

The students are back and basking in their victory.

One team in particular, composed of seventh-graders from Hazlet Middle School, placed sixth out of 54 teams in their category.

"It’s something to be very proud of," said Loretta Zimmer, Middle Road School principal and district coordinator of Odyssey of the Mind.

The world contest, Zimmer explained, works like the Olympics. There are gold, bronze and silver medals as well as three honorable mention placements.

"This is the first time Hazlet has ever placed that high. We are thrilled. The competition is very steep and worldwide," Zimmer said.

To know the competition is to understand its complexities and how difficult it is to place high, Zimmer said.

The Odyssey contest was founded by Dr. Samuel Micklus in 1978, a professor emeritus at Rowan University, Glassboro, where he taught technology courses from 1968 to 1991.

The idea for the contest was born out of Micklus’ experimental teaching methods implemented in his industrial design classes.

According to Micklus’ biographical information, he wrote "challenging problems to set a creative framework for the course, oftentimes rewarding the risk-takers whose solutions may not have worked but whose ideas were feasible and innovative."

Hazlet competes in the Odyssey of the Mind competition every year. In April, they walked away from the state finals with two first-place and three second-place wins in the problem-solving contest.

The five teams that won are made up of elementary, middle and high school students.

The two first places in the state finals went to teams from Hazlet Middle School and Middle Road School.

The second-place designations went to teams at Lillian Drive Elementary School, Raritan High School and Hazlet Middle School.

The first place won by Hazlet Middle School was for that team’s response to a problem, titled "A Scene from Above." At the world competition, the Middle School team placed sixth, the highest of all five attending teams. The team was asked to build, design and run three small vehicles to transport items from an orbit area to an assembly station. As items were added, the scene changed. The items were to be added to a 3-D representation of Earth as seen from space. The scene could be real or imaginary, and the vehicles were to be powered in different ways, the Odyssey literature explained.

In addition to Hazlet Middle School’s first place state win in the "A Scene From Above" category, Lillian Drive School won second place in the same category in the states, and placed 25th out of 54 teams in the world com­petition.

Another first-place winning team in the state competition, Middle Road School, in the "Put a Spin on It" prob­lem, placed 13th out of 52 teams in the world competition.

In this problem teams were asked to "create and present an original perfor­mance about the creation of a work of great human achievement, chosen from a given list," according to Odyssey lit­erature.

During the performance, the team was to hold a "spin session" to devise its own reason for the creation of the work. The session ultimately shows why the work is accepted as fact today. That work is also performed.

Raritan High School, which won second place for the "Know-It-All" prob­lem, placed 18th out of 52 teams in the world competition.

"We did great," Zimmer said. "It was a wonderful experience for the stu­dents, too. They met kids from Hungary, Poland, Singapore, Germany and all over the U.S."

The opening and closing ceremonies, Zimmer said, were run very much like the Olympics with all the states and countries represented.

"We’re delighted that our students had such a wonderful time and were so well represented," Schools Superintendent Renae LaPrete said. "We’re very proud of them. They did ex­tremely well."

In addition to the wins, one team got a unique surprise. The Hazlet Middle School team of eighth-graders, who chose to solve the "Fooled You" prob­lem, was asked if it would like to partic­ipate in the taping of a training video for the competition.

"It’s kind of neat that they were in­vited," Zimmer said. "They’ll have to start working on a new problem for the video. It’ll be a lot of work, but the stu­dents are very excited about it."