Collingswood Odyssey of the Mind Team Gears Up for State Finals

If there’s one lesson that all parents could stand to teach their children, it’s never trust a cow with batteries.

Or parts of a cow. Or, really, the battery-powered conveyance into which you place the cow parts for transportation.

Let’s back up.

In March, Collingswood sent its Odyssey of the Mind teams to their first regional competition at Woodstown High School.

The elementary-school-aged children, who make up one of the newest recreational clubs in the borough, had been practicing their problem-solving skills.

One such challenge was the “Pet Project” problem, which required students “to design, build and run three vehicles from different areas and through obstacles to deliver parts that will be assembled into a pet animal” that must then perform a trick.

The group engineered its solution to the challenge over a period of months, and with minimal adult supervision, as is the purpose of the exercise. And when it was time to compete, the first of their vehicles rolled out onto the floor…and died in its tracks.

The rules of the competition prohibited the students from changing the batteries mid-contest. Months of work had come to this.

But the children improvised, placing the vehicle into one of their hats, which they threw like a Frisbee to transport the cow parts where they needed to go. Sadly, however, that solution cost them a full minute, and so they didn’t complete the entire problem. 

There were tears all around, said coach Kenneth Allendoerfer. But there were also some compassionate judges who complimented the children for their bravery and grace under pressure.

“The judges are great,” Allendoerfer said. “They came over and talked to them and gave them a lot of compliments. They said ‘there’s no reason to cry over this, you did something a lot of kids have never done.’”

And even with all those problems, the group placed third in the regional contest—good enough for a trip to states—and won an “OM’er” award, the acknowledgment that their creativity was not unnoticed.

Odyssey of the Mind is an activity where moments like these can happen at every competition, Allendoerfer said, and that’s what makes it such a valuable, if difficult-to-explain, exercise for children.

“The right kind of Odyssey kid is interested in technical and the performing arts,” Allendoerfer said; “kids who like to build stuff and who aren’t shy about presenting stuff.”

And a town like Collingswood, whose residents boast such a mix of artistic and skilled talents, should be fertile ground for raising creatively competitive kids, he said. That’s also discounting the fact that the competition was invented in New Jersey and is headquartered in Cumberland County. 

“The people I know in Collingswood, I’ve got jewelry makers, plumbers, auto mechanics, artists, photographers,” Allendoerfer said. “Their kids are perfect Odyssey fodder.

“If Texas can have high school football and Indiana can have high school basketball, South Jersey should have creativity competitions.”

If the team is able to come through the next round of competition, they'll be invited to compete at the national contest in Michigan next month.