Model Students : High School Team Wins Contest of ‘Mind’

The problem: Build an efficient, lightweight car for less than $75.

The solution: Plastic foam from appliance boxes, skateboard and lawn mower wheels, mousetraps, a model train engine, a fly swatter.

The winners: Seven students from Nogales High School in La Puente.

Competing against 44 other high school teams that tackled the lightweight car problem in the Odyssey of the Mind, an international competition to solve problems creatively, the Nogales team was the first from California to win in the contest’s 13-year history.

The winning entry, which took the form of a miniature spaceship, was designed by team members who are fans of Robotech, a Japanese science-fiction cartoon saga. After carving and sanding their plastic foam model into angles and curves, the seven youths glued parts onto a 2-by-4-foot wooden frame. The cart-sized car cost about $74 to make.

“Everybody was wild because it was very large but weighed almost nothing,” said William Everett of New York, one of 11 judges. “It looked like a rocket.”

The Odyssey of the Mind contest was started in 1978 by Samuel Micklus, a retired technology professor at Glassboro State College in New Jersey, to get students to solve problems creatively.

“They have to think and do,” Micklus said. “All our projects are hands-on type things.”

Under contest rules barring direct help, the Nogales team’s coach, Steve Ludlam, did not see the finished car until just before the regional competition in La Palma.

“When I saw the car for the first time I thought, well, they weren’t lying when they said they spent a lot of time on it,” Ludlam said.

The Nogales team scored highest based on their performance and presentation of their car, the creativity of a skit accompanying the car and their success with solving an impromptu problem.

The win wasn’t without glitches. During a trial run the day before regional competition, the circuits began to smoke. Team members stayed up until 4:30 a.m. to fix the wiring.

“We work better under pressure,” said T. C. Cheng, a Nogales senior.

Cheng applied his theoretical knowledge of electrical currents and batteries to design the wiring. He used two circuits and two batteries from remote-control cars to propel the car.

When a trailer that had been hitched to the car pulled apart during the state competition at Cal State Fresno, team members had to nudge together a fly swatter and mousetrap that acted as a lock.

“We just kept on smiling and we performed with a good attitude,” said Jane Kuo. Both she and Cheng, the only seniors on the team, will attend UC Berkeley in the fall.

“I always wanted to make a make-believe car,” said 11th-grader Hieu Nguyen. “I had a chance to express myself . . . what has been hiding for so long.”

The student teams competed in four divisions based on grade level. The finalists, culled from regional and state competitions in each division, converged in Knoxville, Tenn., for the May 23-25 international finals.

To showcase their vehicles, student teams were required to perform a skit while their cars hummed around a 70-foot course, went forward and backward, and hitched a small trailer also designed by the individual groups.

The Nogales team chose a James Bond theme, made props and wore costumes for their presentation.

Winners in other divisions of this year’s Buggy Lite category included Boonville, Ind., Junior High School, which used a window control motor in a baby carriage, and Richland College in Dallas. The Richland team’s car was designed in the shape of a heart and used a security system battery.

The night the Nogales entry won, team members called school Principal Ronald Tyler long-distance.

“Our buttons are just popping off our suits,” Tyler said. “This incredible achievement is the most significant demonstration of what our kids are capable of doing at this school.”