Kids Rewarded for Playing Mind Games

They came in costume--a Godzilla here, a George Washington there--and pushed wobbly contraptions crafted from plywood and milk crates. Dry ice and blinking lights provided the special effects, but for the hundreds of youngsters competing Saturday in a unique academic event, imagination was the key.

Part science fair and part performance art, the California Odyssey of the Mind came to Aliso Niguel High School and gave children and young adults from 25 area schools a chance to flex their creative muscles in skits, contests and mind games.

“The goal here is creativity,” organizer Lisa Phillips said. “Explaining the way the different categories work is sort of like trying to explain to someone how to tie their shoe over the phone . . . but it’s about kids putting their imaginations to work. There are no ‘right’ answers.”

For 18 years, students worldwide have attended Odyssey of the Mind competitions, and this year some 700 California schools are expected to send teams of youthful inventors, performers and your basic brainy types to the contests that stress creativity, teamwork and problem solving.

On Saturday, contestants from schools in south Orange and San Diego counties were hoping their scores would propel them on to the statewide competitions.

The big Orange County winners Saturday were Niguel Hills Middle School in Laguna Niguel, with three first-place awards and one third-place award; Marco Forster Middle School in San Juan Capistrano, with two first-place awards and two second-place awards; and Aliso Viejo Middle School, with one first-place award, one second-place award and one third-place award.

Nicolas Junior High School in Fullerton picked up one second-place award and three third-place awards; Del Obispo Elementary School won three third-place awards.

Hankey Elementary School in Mission Viejo; Marian Bergeson Elementary in Laguna Niguel; and Raymond Elementary School in Fullerton all won a first-place award. John Malcom and Moulton elementary schools, both in Laguna Niguel, won second-place awards.

The contestants work in teams and are grouped by age. In one portion of the competition, the teams sit in a circle, are given an open-ended question and take turns offering answers.

Funny or creative answers get extra points, rewarding the youths whose minds are open and flexible. An example: “Name a thing and something that follows it.” “Spring follows winter” would get one point, while “honest people follow their conscience” would get three.

Creativity is also given more credit in the competitions where students show off the projects they have spent months working on. Even if everything doesn’t work to perfection, extra notice is given to the kids who take the unusual approach.

“The risk-taker is rewarded,” one judge whispered as he watched a group from Hankey Elementary School set up their props for an elaborate skit in the “Amusin’ Cruisin’ ” competition. Teams have eight minutes to guide a home-made vehicle through some fantasy world or amusement park setting they have made. All the construction materials must cost less than $100.

The Hankey team built a soap-box car of sorts and guided through a “Jurassic Park”-like setting, with various gadgets on the car triggering music, a faux television, a gurgling dry ice volcano and assorted stuffed dinosaurs that blinked their eyes and danced. Most everything went off without a hitch and thunderous applause filled the high school gym.

“I think we did pretty good,” said Nicky Abalos, the 11-year-old who composed the music that accompanied the skit. “The volcano worked. It’s the second one we built. The first one we made out of paper mache and it didn’t dry all the way . . . it molded over and got real heavy. It smelled really bad so we threw that one away.”

In a nearby room, a team from Aliso Viejo Middle School got a standing ovation for their entry in the “Crunch” contest, an engineering competition. Using balsa wood, the contestants had to fashion a tower structure--small enough to fit in a shoe box--that could support great weights and survive being hit by rolling billiard balls. The Aliso Viejo team’s construct collapsed after 150 pounds--far from the world record of 1,300 pounds, but still impressive, judges said.

Another team from Aliso Viejo Middle overcame a minor crisis with dry ice during their art-poetry presentation in a contest called “Great Impressions.” The students wrote poetry inspired by a Monet painting--which they recreated--and also painted pictures to accompany their reading of a Wordsworth poem. In the audience, parent Dave Brittle peeked at the performance and paintings from behind a program.

“I bet the kids the whole thing would come down on them during their production,” Brittle said with a chuckle as his 13-year-old daughter and her friends danced around large painted curtains hanging from PVC pipe. “But it didn’t fall. It wasn’t straight--but it didn’t fall. Amazing.”