Sonoma Odyssey of the Mind teams take home top honors

More than three dozen local students competed in the Odyssey of the Mind Regional Tournament at Santa Rosa High School on Feb 24. Five teams from Prestwood Elementary and one middle school team (including students from St. Francis, Altimira and Adele) competed. Two teams got first place and another came in second.

The two first-place teams will now advance to the state competition held at UC Riverside in March.

The various competitions included building a car, producing self-made events for jousting, track and curling, and creating an alternative story to such classics as “Peter Pan” or “Alice in Wonderland.”

The middle school team from Sonoma won first place in the Animal House Balsa competition, where they competed to create a 15-gram balsa structure that held 150 pounds, along with a storyline.

In all the divisions, students were required to write their own scripts, create their own props and set, and design their own costumes – making the performances uniquely their own while satisfying Odyssey of the Mind’s stringent criteria.

At the tournament, teams also competed in spontaneous hands-on and verbal challenges that require quick thinking, teamwork and creativity.

The teams had met weekly since November, through coordination of parent-volunteer coaches Kathy Pine, Karly Miller, Prema Behan, Amber Francis, Nicole Marchesi, Lani Gullotta and Melissa Afterman.