Dunedin middle schoolers heading to Odyssey of the Mind world competition

DUNEDIN, Fla. - Dunedin Highland Middle School’s Odyssey of the Mind Structures Team heads to Iowa on Monday to compete at the world competition.

Odyssey of the Mind is a creative problem-solving competition. Teams are given a problem at the beginning of the school year, and create a short skit and build a structure to solve the problem. 

They’ll perform the skit at the competition, and their structure will be tested to see how much weight it can hold. In the other part of the competition, teams are given a problem that they have to solve on the spot. 

Dunedin Middle’s team will compete against about 800 other teams from across the country and the world this week. They came in first in the states in March, qualifying them for worlds. 

"I was confident that our team would do really good and was pleasantly surprised when our team won," Marc Slater, a student on the team, said.  

"The opportunity to compete at such a prestigious event," Cade Gebo, a student on the team, said. "I believe we will do extremely well as we have dedicated a lot of time and energy into preparation for this competition," he said.

The team has five students and they practice twice a week.

"I’m most excited for the experience of going to World Finals rather than the competition itself," Anthony Maillis, another student on the team, said. "I’ve been competing in Odyssey since I was in second grade and this is my first time qualifying for Worlds. It doesn’t matter where we place at Worlds because I know that we’ve put a lot of hard work into this," he said.

The students also credited their teacher, Katrina Walters, for helping them get to this level of the competition. 

Odyssey of the Mind World Finals runs May 21 to May 24.