St. Lucie school teams taking aim at Odyssey of Mind world title at Michigan competition

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21-05-2025

ST. LUCIE COUNTY — How do you create a balsa wood structure that can support 805 pounds? Take lessons from a group of elementary students at Windmill Point Elementary School.
The students created a tower-type structure that can hold 805 pounds of weight as part of the Odyssey of the Mind competition. Now, along with a team from Morningside Elementary, they are going to the world competition on the Michigan State University campus in East Lansing.. It begins May 21.
Odyssey of the Mind is a competition that challenges elementary students to problem-solve and develop critical-thinking skills. Seven-member teams select a problem to solve based on a prompt, and then create a project and presentation around that prompt. Each project must be done 100% by the students. Any help from adult coaches and parents results in a penalty deducted from the team's overall score.
"It's the building and creativity and helping each other I like," said Abigail Rodgers, 10. "I liked all the teamwork."
Mason Black, 9, likes the challenge of the competition.
"I really like building things and making structures," he said. "It makes me feel like I can achieve things."
There are a lot of steps involved, he said.
"When it holds so much (weight), you know it's worth it," Mason said.
Students compete in regional and state competitions before taking their shot at the world competition.
At Windmill Point, students also used balsa wood to create a structure that could hold as much weight as possible. They also had to come up with a performance based on the theme of animal rescue, coaches Sean Caroglanian and Lacey Black explained.
The problem, according to the Odyssey of the Mind website, is to create a performance about an animal rescue character finding a home for balsa wood-and-glue animals created by the students. The performance has to include the rescue character testing how much weight the structure can hold and balance.
The performance also has to include an animal being seen by a veterinarian and the "creative" use of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda, the website said.
The Windmill Point team's structure weighed 18 grams and is about 8 inches tall. Over the course of the school year, the students created a few backup structures and practice designs. They created a koala bear, penguin and their own made-up animal resembling a polar bear with wings.
They used the baking soda to create a hairball for the koala bear to cough up.
Students were required to write the script and create the costumes and set for the performance, Caroglanian said. Coaches provided training on the use of power tools such as drills, a screwdriver and hammer, all while keeping within the rules of the competition.
The Morningside team selected from the "classics" category, building the project around "The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien. The team created a play around the book and created a cooking gadget on its own.
The students also needed to find a way to make a dragon by using utensils. Sporks seemed to be a good way to create dragon scales, explained Devyn Tran, 10.
"It's really fun, and we all get to work together," said Morningside Elementary student Jayda Matthews, 11. "I love coming up with creative solutions."
Devyn said he also likes the teamwork and the friendship he makes during the competition. He enjoyed helping build the set for the Morningside project, which included coming up with a type of flip table that makes the food in the play "magically appear."
He liked working on it at home "when I was bored," he added.
But the student projects also were limited to a budget set by the competition. The students decided to use used sporks, collected from their classmates from the cafeteria, he said.
Competing on the Odyssey of the Mind team takes a huge commitment from the students, coaches say.
"They have to be passionate about it," said Morningside Elementary coach Britt LaChance. Students spend months preparing their presentation and play, practicing twice a week. Once competition season comes around, teams practice three to four times a week.
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In addition to presenting their project, students also compete in a "spontaneous" component at the competition. They're given a problem and have to solve it creatively, working as a unit.
Sets need to be movable and able to be set up quickly. Teams are penalized if they go over the allotted eight minutes.
The students' costs, including registration and travel expenses, are paid for by the school district and by donations such as from the Boys & Girls Club.
Students were excited last week about traveling to Michigan, a first-time destination for some. They plan to trade pins with students from other teams. They've been paired with "buddy teams" from Hong Kong and Poland, and are excited about exchanging gifts from Florida and learning about other cultures.
Colleen Wixon is the education reporter for TCPalm and Treasure Coast Newspapers. She covers school districts in Indian River, Martin and St. Lucie counties.
This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: St. Lucie County schools sending two teams to world competition