By Elizabeth Goldman
Editor-in-Chief
Costa’s Odyssey of the Mind team won first place in the LA Basin Region, first place in Southern California, and first place in the world in its competitions on May 25-28, held in Ames, Iowa. The team is made up of juniors Luke Green and Brian Chiu and Costa sophomores Ashlyn Green, Abigail Seo, and Andrew Fan, along with sophomore Ella Kim from Marlborough.
Odyssey of the Mind is a program that tests teamwork, creativity, and academics where each team works together to solve a predefined problem that is presented at a competition.
“Andrew Fan’s dad found the program [when I was in fifth grade], and decided to ask my family to help form a team with him,” Luke Green said. “After that we basically just had to reach out to a couple other families and ask them to join, and the team changed from year to year, but Andrew Fan, Ashlyn Green, and I are the three members from the original team.”
Costa’s team competed in Problem Four, Matryoshka Structure, where they were required to build a balsa wood structure at least 8 inches tall, weighing, at most, 15 grams, and could fit a two-inch pole inside of it. From here, they had to be able to take apart the main structure to reveal various replica structures nested inside. They were judged in three categories: their long term problem and solution, a spontaneous problem score, and the weight their structure held.
“Although we have lots of fun trying to solve the problem throughout the year, the actual day/week of competing just gives everyone such an amazing feeling,” Luke Green said. “I’ve been competing in this program for so many years and failed so many times, so to finally be able to walk up to center stage in front of tens of thousands of people and receive a giant trophy and gold medal is just such a satisfying and accomplishing feeling.”
The problem for each year is released a couple of months after Worlds. The team then spends the months until the State competition preparing their script and props, and finding a solution that meets all requirements and will get them the highest possible score. They have an official three-hour meeting every week, but they plan extra meetings or work in smaller groups to get additional things done.
“Usually we use the time from when the problem is released to after the State tournament to finalize our script for our skit and to finalize our props,” Fan said. “After State we start putting on some last minute finishing touches to everything after spending months preparing our script and props. For our towers, I usually build them 2 weeks in advance because the super glue that I use needs that much time to set.”
During the regional competition, the team faced challenges, according to Fan, but they were able to figure it out and take first place. They then went on to win first in the remaining two rounds.
“One challenge we ran into was during the regional competition when we didn’t have a correct way of making our balsa wood structure into a Matryoshka structure,” Fan said. “Eventually, after multiple trial and error runs, the team was able to find a beautiful solution which we believed to be the best option, and in the end it helped us win first place.”
The team won Worlds last year so, according to Fan, they expected to go into the Worlds competition this year, but were unsure if they would win twice in a row. However, their 15 gram structure was able to hold 1225 pounds of weight, the most weight a structure has held in competition since 2018.
“My favorite part is seeing all the hard work my team puts in pay off at Worlds, as we have dedicated too many hours to count to achieving the best solution,” Ashlyn Green said. “I also love meeting different people from around the world and from different states in the US when we go to the World Competition.”
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