Carteret High School Will Host Odyssey Of The Mind This Saturday

CARTERET, NJ — On Saturday, this team of students from Carteret High School will compete in the state finals of the NJ "Odyssey of the Mind" tournament.

The statewide competition will be held at Carteret High School, starting at 8:30 a.m. this Saturday, April 13 and running all day. The competition is open to the public: The public is invited to watch as 90 teams from across the state present their creations.

What is Odyssey of the Mind? It's a creative problem-solving competition for elementary, middle and high school students. Think of it as a cross between a high school theater production and robotics club.

Teams of seven students are asked to solve one of six possible problems, culminating in an eight-minute presentation. They have to adhere to a strict budget, and must do everything without adult involvement.

This year, students had to choose a challenge:

• Create a small vehicle that performs tasks while appearing in a drive-in movie
• Build an AI device that critiques an art piece and then dismantles and resembles it into something more beautiful
• Portray the opening night of a theatrical classic story complete with malfunctions and varied antics
• Build a balsa structure capable of holding weight that is discovered in deep space
• Create a rock-and-roll band playing original team-created instruments and music.

The Carteret High School team is made up of:

• Seniors Mason Diaz, Mark Patricks, Dhruv Prajapati and Joshua Vitug
• Juniors Michelle Hernandez and Sukhveen Gill
• Sophomore Daiancy Aquino

Their advisor is Nicole Gonzalez, a science teacher at Carteret High School.

Saturday's top two teams will advance to the Odyssey World Finals, held in Iowa this May.

Odyssey of the Mind was actually invented at Rowan University in South Jersey, by engineering professor Dr. Sam Micklus. In the 1970s, Dr. Sam (as he’s affectionately known in Odyssey circles) challenged his students to do things like create vehicles without wheels, machines that could throw baked pies and flotation devices that would carry students across a lake.

Micklus graded his students not on the success of their inventions — but on the risks they took in trying something new and different. Students had fun; word spread. In 1978, Odyssey of the Mind was born as official and sanctioned school tournaments.

Not only the state where Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, New Jersey "is proud to be known as the birthplace of creative problem solving," said Carteret High School teacher Gonzalez.

Stop by Carteret High School this Saturday and check it out!