After a season of virtual competitions, Red Hawk Elementary School’s Odyssey of the Mind team is headed to Florida for the World Finals.
Students and teammates Luke Brown, Quentin Bliss, Kaleb Russell, Talon Smith and Blake Stump, along with their coaches, left this week for competition in Orlando this weekend. The team has competed virtually all year, but it didn’t hurt their chances; they placed first at their regional competition, and later earned second place at the state competition in March.
The team is competing in the “Virtual Odyssey” problem this year, where students put together a live performance that includes a virtual reality world. Part of the prescribed challenge is to design and build technical effects that change something from 2D into 3D.
To prepare for the World Finals, parent and coach Rachel Stump said the team had to convert their set to make it collapsible.
“Since regional and state competitions were virtual, the boys made a 6-foot-by-6-foot cube on wheels for all the different backgrounds during their play,” said Stump. “Now that they are going to Worlds in person, they have to make it fit through a standard door. They figured out a way to make it smaller by using lots of hinges.”
Odyssey of the Mind is a problem-solving competition that teaches students how to approach various challenges, both planned and unplanned, using critical thinking and creativity.
