Blytheville OM team takes 10th at World Finals

Central Elementary School's Odyssey of the Mind team directed by Coach Curtis Walker wound up 10th in the Division I "You Make the Call" structure problem at the May 23-26 OM World Finals at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.

The World Finals represented the culmination of an Odyssey of the Mind experience that had been five to six months in the making for Central's students and adult leaders.

Team members included Bo Hale, Garrett Cloud, Amita Panda, Alexis Bivens, Robert Real, Rushanti Taylor and Charlie Groves.

As Diane Hay, the Blytheville School District's Gifted and Talented and OM director, said later, students from different cultures and widely-varying economic backgrounds proved that creativity is universal.

"They demonstrated their unique creative solution to an Odyssey of the Mind problem while appreciating the creativity of others," Hay said. "The team, comprised of no more than seven students, worked throughout the school year solving an OM problem, and were judged as the most creative in a series of rigorous state and national competitions."

At World Finals, the teams represented their state and country in hopes to prove that they are the world's most creative problem-solvers. Odyssey of the Mind had 685 teams throughout the United States, including Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, North Dakota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Vermont, Wisconsin and West Virginia, and in more than 15 other countries (130 teams) including Canada, China, Dodds (Department of Defense schools), Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Korea and Switzerland.

Hay offered a special note of gratitude to one parent, Ron Cloud, who took on the role of "assistant coach" to Coach Curtis Walker throughout the week.

"He stepped up and carried props to wherever they were needed," Hay said.

"Everyone was awesome. The kids were wonderful," Hay said. "The parents and families were awesome. We had the best time a group could have at this competition. It was a lot of work and sweat on all of us, but very worth it. Our dorm rooms had no air-conditioning, and there were only three showers/restrooms on our floor for each gender. We endured rain, cold and steamy hot weather. Add that to 14 tired folks that had a 15-minute travel just to eat at the assigned cafeteria, and you get a wonderful Odyssey of the Mind experience."