04/15/2007

Record-Eagle/Douglas Tesner
Judges Chris Horenziak and Alicia Fuller meet with Allie Graziano, 9, Elijah Lelito, 10, and Blake Bruner, 9, after a weight crushed their team’s balsa structure during the Odyssey of the Mind Michigan State Finals. The team consisted of six members from Mill Creek Elementary School.

Students show off creativity at OM state finals

Local children among those competing

By PATRICK SULLIVAN

psullivan@record-eagle.com

Record-Eagle/Douglas Tesner
Graziano picks up weights to pass them to Ben Bruner, 11, who will place them on top of the balsa structure the team from Mill Creek built.

TRAVERSE CITY — The switch from coaching little league to an Odyssey of the Mind team took some getting used to for Steven Winowiecki.

First, the St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Middle School parent needed to train himself to possess a different disposition. When he coached his son's baseball team, there was no question who was in charge. In OM, the coach answers questions and encourages creativity, but doesn't make decisions.

"In baseball, it's, 'You will do this, you will do this, you will do this;' it's drilling,” Winowiecki said. In OM, "if you see a train wreck coming, you have to let it happen. That's how they learn.”

Saturday, at the state finals in Traverse City, Winowiecki hoped to repeat a win last year that got his team an invitation to the world finals in Iowa.

The Traverse City Central High School campus and buildings at Northwestern Michigan College buzzed with activity as over 1,000 students competing on 155 teams from around the state vied for spots in the OM world finals to be held this year at Michigan State University.

Winowiecki isn't sure he even heard of the program until his daughter, 12-year-old Miranda, came home from school one day and announced her team needed a coach.

"At first I kind of resisted, it was a little intimidating,” Winowiecki said. "I didn't know what the program was about. I thought you had to be a rocket scientist to be involved.”

But after three weeks he got the hang of it and Winowiecki was hooked.

Maureen DeYoung, a former principal at Grand Traverse Area Catholic Schools' Holy Angels Elementary who has a daughter on Winowiecki's team, said she pushed to jump start an OM program at her school, and parents willing to give their time are what a school needs to get one established.

"It really takes parents stepping up to the plate to do it and we've been blessed with the number of parents we've had in the past six years,” DeYoung said.

The competitions could seem strange to outsiders at first.

Students choose one of several problems and create a skit that addresses the problem.

Deb Hyde, a computer specialist at Lewiston Schools, southwest of Gaylord, coached kids who chose a problem called "Classics ... Around the World in Eight Minutes.”

The students needed to create a skit with a plot that included a visit to three places: two that actually exist in the world and a third of their invention. The story needed to account for how the characters travel to each location, and the characters needed a different reason for traveling to each place.

Judges are trained to take into account aspects of the performance down to minute detail.

"When I first got involved years ago, I thought, 'OK, where do I begin?'” Hyde said. But Hyde stuck with it for over 20 years.

"My son will be 27 next month and he got involved in the first grade,” she said. "I think it builds teamwork skills, it teaches kids how to think quick on their feet, how to deal with joys and disappointment.”

Bernard and Ruth Haak, of Holland, came to watch their granddaughter perform. When their own children were in school, there was nothing like Odyssey of the Mind offered. After watching many competitions, the Haaks are fans.

"I taught for 30 years, I retired in '92, and we didn't have anything like this when I was teaching,” Ruth Haak said.

"The imagination that these kids come up with just blows my mind; it's all them, they don't get any help,” Bernard Haak said. "I think it's just fantastic.”