Odyssey of the Mind, World Finals 2018

This little journey began early in the school year and the group has been meeting and making props for all of these months now.  Well, it hasn't been all work, there has been plenty of screwing around too, but they made it work.

Back on April 8th, I posted here that they had won their state level competition and would be heading to World Finals.

So we headed up to Ames Iowa on Wednesday night, May 23rd to get Robby delivered, registered, fed, squared away in the dorm building of Geoffrey Hall, and then finally, back to Hilton Coliseum for the Opening Ceremonies.

And that brings us current! Off to see some pictures.

This is early on with some dancing and talking about various things.  You can kinda tell that it's early based on all of the open seats at this point.

At this point, nearly all of the various countries had been announced and marched in.  Those are the people that are filling up the floor. We had kids competing from Qatar, Russia, Canada, Japan, China, Taiwan, India, Germany, Hong Kong, Poland, Mexico and roughly 20-25 of the United States.  I'm sure I've forgotten a few countries.

At this point, they had just emerged from the back room with their props and are receiving instructions from the... uh, instruction peoples.  They chose to solve the Emoji problem, so they couldn't talk at all, which if you know Rob, you know that had to drive the boy nuts!

This is the first race in which the subject of their story wins the big race and eats the victory cookies, causing him to become fat as he ages.  The prop on the left is a cell phone that had text messages to help tell the silent story.

This is the race after he becomes fat and he loses and becomes depressed.

Close up of Robby, because I like him... obviously, the race is still going on.

This was the choreographed dancing sequence in which they experienced an equipment malfunction when the song from one of their phones would not play.  They got it going eventually and finished, with only about a 30 second delay.

The team: Serena, Ashlee, Alie, Joey, Noah and Robby.  Sadly, they're down one member (Aidan) who experienced a serious medical issue only a week before and wasn't able to attend worlds.

And once they perform, you haul the props out the back of the building to the dumpster and bust up all of your hard work and pitch it...  Notice Robby is that little silhouette who is down off of the loading dock as he apparently did not understand the concept of throwing stuff away.  He threw garbage OVER the dumpster and onto the ground.

You can barely see Rob's head again at the right of the photo.

Robby barely visible again...  This is most of the group and most of the parents in attendance as well.

So how did they do?  They dropped points from their performance at State and were roughly middle-of-the-pack (25th, I believe) from the teams that presented the Emoji problem and 10th for their spontaneous presentation.  It could have gone better, but it is what it is, and I'm proud of them.

Robby wasn't going to do it again next year, but he said after his 3.5 days on the Iowa State campus that he's about 99% sure that he's doing it again.

Also,  a HUGE thank you to Coach Christie for her time, use of her basement to build/paint props, drive the kids to the store, and probably all kinds of other things that I am not even aware of!  Not only that, but it was obvious at the state competition that not all coaches followed the rules of NOT helping with props and the presentation overall. Our coach followed the rules and the kids are better for it!