Odyssey of the Mind

A few weeks ago, Son #1's Odyssey of the Mind team competed at Regionals in the Extreme Mousemobile category. The competition was held at a high school across town during a blinding storm. After their performance, all of the parents threw the soaking wet remnants of their project in the trunks of their cars and sped off.

Apparently it was a little awkward later that evening when they unexpectedly won first place and not a single team member or coach (including the hubby) was at the award ceremony. All of the parents started getting calls, "You guys just won. Where are you?" Oops. Time to put everything back together again.

Last weekend, we all descended upon the SUNY Binghamton campus for States. All 4K of us, more or less. It was like a nerd convention meets cheerleading competition. Kids of all ages, from fourth grade through high school seniors, were decked out. Painted faces. Crazy t-shirts. Wild hair. Giant contraptions for the various competitions. Early Saturday morning, it was a mix of palpable excitement and stress. The place was buzzing with energy. As the day wore on, and kids were sleeping in the hallways outside lecture halls between matches, it began to take on the appearance of a dingy bus station chock full of weary travelers.

One lecture hall was used as a holding area for teams who were about to enter the spontaneous portion of the competition. It smelled like the Wisconsin State Capitol after three weeks of protesters camping out. The room was overseen by a grown man wearing a tuxedo t-shirt and black sport jacket. He was working the crowd and asking for "talent" to come up and perform. High school kids would lead the audience in rousing singalongs to the Pokemon theme song. Another man/team engaged the audience in a singing/dancing/Simon Says-like game. Arms out. Thumbs up. Legs bent. Knees together. Rump out. Tongue out. It was like a kid-friendly Time Warp.

Every few minutes, an escort would appear in the back of the hall. The audience would then recite some strange "mirror mirror" chant and the escort would dutifully announce the next team. Bizarre.

Needless to say, it was a long day.

The awards ceremony took place that evening in the sports stadium. Although it didn't start until 6:30 p.m., we got a call just after 5:00 p.m. that the place was filling up and our neighbors were holding seats for us. So there we sat before the ceremony (while the floor was packed with kids dancing), during a painfully long silent auction where they raffled off last year's t-shirts, through the welcome and thank yous (to everyone from the judges to the Board of Directors), through the wave, through the ear shattering "make noise" nonsense, through the various scholarship and merit-based awards and then, finally, through the announcement of the top 2-5 teams of every competition and every division. Yes, they saved the #1 teams for last which meant that no one could bail early. To make it even longer (because we all know how patient kids are), one by one, the teams that came in second and third, 30 teams in all, descended from the bleachers, walked the length of the stadium, accepted their awards and took pictures.

Fun.

Sadly, our team tied Massapequa for 10th place out of 20 teams. Had we been as skeptical (or, in this case, realistic) as we were for Regionals, we could have blown out of there in the early afternoon.

Regardless, I'm glad we had the experience just this one time. And I'm grateful that we don't have to endure three more days of this at World championships in MD at the end of May. But most of all I'm just proud of Son #1 and his teammates for making it to States in the first place. They did a great job.