Wewahitchka Middle School OM Team Heads to Worlds

A device created to launch a football through a goal post has catapulted the Wewahitchka Middle School Odyssey of the Mind (OM) team to the World Finals.

Doni Lanier, Alexa Allison, Joseph Tanner, Trey McGill and Emily King finished fifth in the state creative problem solving competition, three places too low to conventionally earn a spot at world.

But an elegant device for throwing a football earned them OM's highest honor - the Ranatra Fusca Creativity Award - and an automatic advance to the World competition, held May 31-June 3 at the University of Maryland.

In a nod to the inventions of Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Rube Goldberg, the team's device achieved a simple result using a series of complicated tasks unrelated to the outcome.

Marbles transferred from a funnel through a tube weighed down a plastic bucket, tripping the string to a lever, in turn releasing a mousetrap, which propelled the football through a goal post.

In awarding the team the Ranatra Fusca Creativity Award, the judges called the creativity used to accomplish the task "most exceptional."

The device was just one of a series of clever touches used by the Division II team to solve the long-term problem, "Odyssey Road Rally."

Spending a maximum of $145 dollars on materials, the team designed, built and operated an original vehicle to drive in a road rally featuring four checkpoints.

Contest rules required the vehicle to compete in a sports-related event at each checkpoint.

The middle school team devised a planetary theme for their eight-minute skit, setting their 5008 Saturn Road Rally on the planet's rings.

The students dramatized their skit as a struggle between good and evil.

Allison, a seventh-grader, plays a race car driver whose journey is continuously sabotaged by an evil villain (sixth-grader King) and her henchman, an anxiety-ridden robot (eighth-grader Tanner).

Lanier, an eighth-grader, plays a Saturn news reporter who sprinkles her race commentary with asides on Saturn's political candidates "Sillary, Olama and McSane."

Eighth-grader McGill plays Lanier's tone deaf sidekick and cameraman who dreams of becoming the next "Saturn Idol."

Allison, the smallest of the lot, climbed skillfully into the driver's seat of a triangular shaped vehicle crafted from a bicycle and a child's 4-wheeler.

Fully automated, the vehicle, dubbed "Maduer" (as in "Thingamaduer"), was powered by two drill batteries and operated by dual toggle switches.

No other team at state created anything as complex, said King, noting, "Everybody else's looked like a rectangle or a square."

During the course of the skit, the evil villain sets up a variety of obstacles, which Allison skillfully destroys using sports-related weaponry.

She dislodges an asteroid by shooting a soccer ball at it; defeats a wooden alien shuffle-board style, with a pendulum arm pulled back by a reel; and launches a tennis ball through a black hole, using a gadget modeled after a potato-gun

In her final coup, Allison shoots a football through a satellite placed in her way by the evil villain, who trys to sabotage her vehicle with "radioactive rocks."

The rocks - we call them marbles on planet Earth - set off the team's award-wining Rube Goldberg device.

The tennis ball, soccer ball and football launchers and pendulum arm are all automated and mounted on the vehicle.

According to King, making the vehicle fully automated was one of the many "changes and tweaks" the team made after an error-ridden performance at regionals, which nonetheless won them gold.

The team plans to make a few minor changes prior to the World Finals, such as costume upgrades.

Lanier plans to don a cape for her on-air performance - "So I'll be a ‘Super Reporter'" - and a headpiece that gives new meaning to the word "headline."

Lanier envisions a giant volcano featuring the breaking news line "Volcano on Saturn."

The students are also preparing for their spontaneous problem, which will be revealed once they arrive at the finals.

The team's luck at the spontaneous problem has been hit and miss.

Though they were disappointed with their spontaneous problem showing at state, they triumphed at regionals with a clever solution to the problem, "Make an unusual food using a common ingredient."

The team opted for toenail-filled hot dogs, and impressed judges with a jingle written by Allison, entitled, "Put feet in your meat."

Though there's no way of knowing what the world spontaneous problem will be - hence, spontaneous - the team has sharpened their critical thinking skills by doing a variety of exercises during their downtime.

"Normally we take things out of a backpack," said Allison, describing a recent problem as, "How could this object break you out of jail?"

The students have practiced their skit from 4:30-8 p.m. each day for several months, at the homes of coaches Lisa Combs and Claude McGill.

Though the team operates like a well-oiled machine, their early days were fraught with uncertainty.

When their OM sponsor, former middle school teacher Cameron Totman, moved to Orlando, the team almost called it quits.

Combs and McGill, who both have children in the team, rose to the challenge.

"To keep them from disbanding, we took it over," said Combs, who received frequent advice from Matthew Miller, a Wewahitchka High School graduate who twice led his team to the World Finals.

Adversity, it seems, has sweetened the team's victory.

"We stumbled through this and we ended up going to world," laughed Combs.

The Wewahitchka Middle School Odyssey of the Mind team must raise $5,000 for their trip to the World finals in Maryland.

Their school is contributing housing and registration fees, but they still have a long way to go.

To make a contribution, please call Orin Combs at 819-0763 or Claude McGill at 814-1995. Checks can also be sent to Wewahitchka Middle School.