Raritan NJ
3-12-2024 7:27pm

Middle School Odyssey of Mind club students qualified for state tournament

When a group of students at the Bridgewater-Raritan Middle School are presented with a problem, they put their minds—and ingenuity—to work.

These students are members of the Bridgewater-Raritan Middle School Odyssey of Mind club who are guided by their two Co-Advisors, Eve Wasserman, who is in her second year as the club’s coach, and Lindsay Rath, who is in her first year.

Ms Rath, who is a Latin Teacher at the middle school, provided an explanation on the mission and objectives of the club.

“Odyssey of the Mind is an organization that presents students with problems that they need to solve creatively while fulfilling all the technical requirements,’’ Ms. Rath said.

The students have been preparing all school year for the Odyssey of Mind Regional Tournament that was held on Saturday, March 2, at Millburn High School.

Bridgewater-Raritan Middle School entered the Regionals with two teams—-one is called the Vehicle Team and the other is titled the Rock Band Team.

“Our teams have been working tirelessly since September on their solutions, spending countless hours both after school and on their own time on nights and weekends to create their props and skits,’’ Ms. Rath reported.

She provided some examples of the type of tasks that the students were required to conquer.

“”One of our teams had to create a vehicle that moved on its own while completing tasks such as turning 360° and getting food from a concession stand without human interaction, all while being part of a skit about a drive-in movie that the characters become a part of,’’ Ms. Rath said. “Our vehicle team created a car that was coded to respond to voice commands, and became part of a movie that took place in Ancient Rome. Their set even included a homemade Colosseum.”

She continued to explain some other challenges.

“The other team was tasked with creating a skit about a rock band on tour that gets detoured to an unexpected location and has to figure out how to make it back,’’ Ms. Rath revealed.. “Some of their costumes or props had to be made of upcycled trash items, and they also had to create and perform their own songs, as well as create their own original instrument. Our team made a band called “The Candy Kids” and used candy wrappers to make their costumes. They made giant candy props out of items such as pool noodles and scraps of cardboard.”

Ms. Rath continued her report of the activities that day in Millburn.

“Additionally, both teams had to partake in a “spontaneous” problem during the competition in which they aren’t given any information ahead of time and have to think on their feet to complete,’’ she said. ”We also had parents who judged or volunteered at the competition, as well as parent chaperones.”

Once the competition was completed in Millburn, both Bridgewater-Raritan Middle School teams finished in second place.

That placement qualified both middle school teams to participate in the State Competition that will be held on Saturday, April 13, in Carteret.

“They had to present their solutions there (Regionals in Millburn) and have been working on them for months,’’ Ms. Wasserman, the Bridgewater-Raritan Middle School 7th Grade Special Education Teacher—English Language Arts and Social Studies, said.

At the State Competition, the Bridgeater-Raritan students will have the opportunity to qualify and advance to the World Finals that will be held from May 21-24 at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.

“We are so proud of both teams and we wish them luck in the state finals next month,’ Ms. Rath and Ms. Wasserman both declared.

Here are the Bridgewater-Raritan Middle School Odyssey Mind teams.

Vehicle Team
Auryn Bartido
Logan Gasmen
Sricharan Gurugubelli
Arihaan Mallick
Mateo Moses
Avantika Nambiar
Anshuman Roy

Rock Band Team
Lillian Carty
Kimaya Chaubal
Julia Morsella
Anika Nandi
Sonia Patel
Sohi Shah

More News from Raritan
I'm interested
I disagree with this
This is unverified
Spam
Offensive