Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 30, 1990 TAG: 9005300544
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: MARK LAYMAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BUCHANAN LENGTH: Medium
Cookie crumbs and empty soft-drink bottles are scattered on a table. Seven students are there, all talking at once. They're laughing, cracking jokes. Kidding each other. It's LOUD.
Football players lift weights. Basketball players shoot layups.
Competitors in the Odyssey of the Mind sharpen their wits.
"OK," Coach Paula Miller tells the gang. "Ways to clean your teeth. . . . Ready? Go!"
Each student is assigned a number. They draw cards. When their number comes up, they have to answer. Fast.
"With a sandpaper salad."
"With a molar solution." A chemistry teacher would love that pun.
"With a tongue - preferably your own."
Hmm . . . Well, they ARE high school kids.
"They're hard to keep up with sometimes," teacher Judy Imhoff admits with a smile.
But they're good.
This James River team took home a first-place prize in state Odyssey of the Mind competition at the College of William and Mary last month. They left today for Iowa State University of Science and Technology in Ames to compete in this week's World Odyssey of the Mind.
This is the second trip to world competition for one member of the team, Karla Miller. In 1986, her Botetourt Intermediate School team went to Flagstaff, Ariz., and placed 14th.
"This is the best team I've been on," Miller said. "The competition is stiff. We have a really good chance, but we're really gonna have to fight for it."
Suzanne Wright tried to avoid overconfidence. "We'll do OK," she said. "We won't embarrass our state."
The four seniors and three freshmen on the team have a variety of extracurricular interests, such as band, wrestling and soccer.
Pete Cleveland plays a British soldier in Revolutionary War re-enactments. John Miller - Paula's son and Karla's brother - is nuts about radio-controlled cars. So is Alex McRae. ("They're packing only one change of clothes so they can take their cars," Paula Miller joked.)
Karla Miller - who figures she's destined to be "a slightly lunatic writer who loves cats" - is off to George Mason University in the fall. Tracey Kolb wants to study environmental science and psychology at Hollins College. For Wright, it's communications at James Madison University. And Jason Thomas will be walking the rat line at Virginia Military Institute.
But for the rest of this week, at least, the seven are in sync. That's a result of hours of lock-the-door-when-you-leave work since last fall.
As regional and state competition draws nearer, "You see each other every day," Kolb said. "You do everything together."
During the competition, each Odyssey of the Mind team must solve a spontaneous problem that requires brainstorming, dramatization, creative writing, costume-making or drawing.
Each team also has a yearlong project. The James River team used papier-mache, an apple crate, chicken wire and an old typewriter to build a mechanical mobster called "Al Carphone" - alias "Carface" - that shows emotion with its headlights and radiator grill. "We went to a hardware store and looked around," Karla Miller said. "We saw a lot of neat stuff, and the ideas just started flying."
The skit in which Carface stars includes music, dance, dastardly derelicts - including a floozy with an Uzi - "asinine alliteration" and plenty of puns.
The team - which calls itself Third World Auto Body Inc. - designed buttons with a computer drawing of a sinister-looking Carface to give away during the competition at Iowa State.
Travel and boarding expenses for the trip are expected to total $5,000. The team has been raising money, and it hopes the Botetourt County School Board will make up any shortfall.
Teams from three other Western Virginia schools have qualified for World Odyssey of the Mind: Community School, a private school in Roanoke County; Hidden Valley Junior High School, a Roanoke County public school; and Gilbert Linkous Elementary School from Montgomery County.
by CNB