So You Think You’ve Got Problems?

Much to their parents’ exceeding pride, eighth-graders Kristin Brewer, Heather Cutrona, Therese Thibault, Maureen Vincenty and Lauren Wells have assumed the persona of rats seeking to exterminate humankind.

No garden-variety rodents, these rats are part of a highly intelligent ancient civilization called Ratlantis. It worshiped a cat goddess--Catus Maximus--before it vanished in 5000 BC.

Now, only four relics of the society have been found, including a gold bejeweled plaque awarded for the best human destruction device. Purely self-defense, mind you; humans were eating all their food.

Altogether now, the rat girls exclaim: “Those wretched thieves!”

Their coach is beaming. Their timekeeper Vanessa Choi, the teammate who tracks offstage matters, is laughing like she hasn’t seen this drama practiced a hundred times.

It is a fanciful story the girls from Niguel Hills Middle School dreamed up last fall for a national program called Odyssey of the Mind.

And earlier this month, their imagination, practice and teamwork paid off at the California Odyssey finals at UC Santa Barbara, where about 1,300 students from elementary through high school vied to represent the state at the world championships in June.

The Ratlantis girls scored their best ever at the state finals April 19 when their team and others from Orange County schools culminated eight months of intense work. One of Aliso Viejo Middle School’s teams will be going to the world finals.

The nonprofit Odyssey of the Mind group aims to inspire kids to think critically and brainstorm. It differs from traditional scholastic derbies such as the Academic Decathlon by stressing creative problem-solving over committing information to memory.

Twenty schools in Orange County now participate in Odyssey of the Mind. Odyssey founder C. Samuel Micklus, professor emeritus of Rowan College in New Jersey, still writes many of the five “problems” that are worked on by 1 million students a year in the U.S. and abroad, according to Odyssey.

The program got its start when Micklus challenged students in his industrial design classes by giving exercises in creative problem-solving and rewarding those who took more risks with their solutions.

Media attention spread word of the concept, and local high schools began trying to solve his “problems.” The first OM competition was in 1978.

For $190 annual membership, a school can participate and receive up to five problems that will be worked on for months by the students. Teams that compete in a tournament pay an additional $55 fee. The Ratlantis team earned its admission by holding a garage sale.

Of the county’s 20 member schools, 15 had teams competing in challenges; the others used their Odyssey material as teaching tools in the classroom. It is especially popular in GATE programs, although Odyssey fans say it is hardly elitist.

Parents and teachers who rave about the Odyssey concept say that despite competition, emphasis is on kids experiencing the joy of working out problems--process over prize.

The goal of the program, according to Odyssey literature, is to cultivate the brainstorming and project management skills in young people that are “found in corporate America for which few people are formally trained.”

Athena Wu of San Jose watched her son embrace the team spirit of Odyssey for two years and then, as an elementary school student, make it to the world finals.

“Especially as parents, we tend to see blue is blue, pink is pink. This program is always asking you to see the same thing from a different angle,” Wu says, turning a pen in her hand to make her point. “So when these kids grow up, they’ll look at things from all sides.”

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In the weeks preceding the brain-off in Santa Barbara, the Ratlantis team prepared with several rehearsals weekly, sometimes for 10 hours a day. The state competition would be the culmination of work begun in September.

Typically, a team of no more than seven students will form once school begins in September and then find a teacher or parent to coach. Coaches are there to keep students on track--particularly younger ones--but must leave all decisions to the kids.

Eager as some parents are to help, interfering actually handicaps students in competition, not to mention undermining the purpose of the program.

“It is real difficult, because they have to do it all themselves and . . . I’m sort of like a perfectionist, but so is my daughter,” says Paul Brewer, Kristin’s father. “Artwork for the [Ratlantis stage] she has redone many times, because it didn’t look right to her.”

Bobbie Thibault, coach of the Ratlantis team, is practiced at refraining from giving children answers they can find themselves. She is a teacher.

“Kids are kids, and they don’t always use their time well, so it helps for the coach to keep them focused,” says Thibault, whose daughter Therese has worked on Odyssey solutions since fifth grade with Kristin and Maureen.

Last fall, the girls met to decide which of the five challenges they would take on. Rules and instructions are complicated. The team members met three times before they understood them.

They chose “Classics . . . Can You Dig It?,” a challenge about archeology. The Ratlantis team’s task: to construct four artifacts and show them being used in ancient times; to portray a modern-day archeologist who explains the relics; and to weave a story line around them.

The team will have eight minutes to put up props and give its performance.

Such a scenario combines drama, performance, timing, cooperation, artistry, thrift and budgeting. Other OM challenges included building a robot with human features and designing balsa wood structures that would be tested with weight.

The Ratlantis team, whose members are dancers, musicians and performers, decided the archeology challenge would be the best match.

Early brainstorming produced ideas such as a trash planet where Tupperware grew on trees along with giant bananas and oranges. The alien inhabitants would have two heads. When the creature touched its toes, the second head would pop up from the lower back.

They eventually agreed on the rat civilization. Then came script writing. Over and over they rewrote theirs. Occasionally, feelings were hurt as one person’s idea was abandoned for another’s.

With the script ready the girls began to stage their story, working within the mandated $100 budget limit.

Concrete casting forms from a construction company were transformed with paint into Roman columns for Ratlantis. Painting the vertical shaded stripes took 13 hours. Bamboo to build the human trap was found in the trash. Costumes were sewn with remnants. Vanessa, 14, logged all purchases. The only nonperforming team member, she kept receipts and photographs to present to judges at competition time.

By Feb. 22, the Ratlantis team was ready for the regional Odyssey of the Mind finals in Aliso Viejo.

On that Saturday, 50 teams from Orange and San Diego counties presented their solutions to judges at a regional tournament at Aliso Niguel High. Winners would go to state finals.

The girls triumphed with the Ratlantis production, scoring so high that they won the coveted creativity award. But the spontaneous event, in which teams enter a room with no clue what situation judges will give them to solve, didn’t go as well. “We did bad,” says Lauren, 13. “We scored 6.33 out of 100!”

For the state finals, they would be more prepared.

“That spontaneous event, well they learned so much: how to handle defeat, how to regroup, how to work as a team,” Thibault the coach says. “It was an incredible learning experience.”

*

In the Laguna Niguel garage of Kristin, which hasn’t housed a car since before Christmas, the Ratlantis girls are staging a final dress rehearsal for their performance Saturday at the state finals.

“I need some help!” Maureen calls out to the others as she hammers a nail into the frame of the human destruction device. It seems each time the trapdoor drops, it either catches or crashes hard enough to wear down the wine-cork buffer they’ve built.

Maureen is the narrator who introduces Act 1: “We all know about the Bronze Age. Before that, there was a Stone Age. Even before that, there was the Rat Age, which is one of the deepest, darkest secrets of history. The rats’ mission was to exterminate all humans, so they held a convention for that purpose. . . . “

After the rats (Cleoratra, Ratistotle, Rodentia) gripe about having to repair the trapdoor yet again, coach Thibault chides, “Girls, I don’t want to hear that. She says she needs help, now come on.”

Therese, wearing a tunic adorned with shiny planets and stars and a sparkly head scarf to portray a “hippy psychic archeologist,” pitches in to help Maureen.

Over and over the girls do the drama. Each time, Vanessa clocks it at seven minutes, 43 seconds. During one run-through, Heather hurts her wrist trying to twist into a pink sequined jacket for one of her scenes.

“What are you guys gonna do?” coach Thibault asks. Should they abandon the jacket for a different one? The team brainstorms.

“How about pinning it on and off?”

“Can we cut it?”

“Velcro!”

Problem solved.

After seven performances, the team decides that will be all before they head north the next morning for the finals.

The biggest challenge of the day turns out to be agreeing on where to go for takeout dinner. “I don’t like sandwiches,” says one. “I like sandwiches, but not Subway. . . . What about Togo’s? Are you sure we can’t go to Taco Bell? I was thinking pizza. . . . I never eat pizza. . . . “

*

Saturday morning, show time, UC Santa Barbara. But first, the brain gladiators need shoring up. So a stop is made for breakfast--loading up on that fuel of great minds, sugar.

Most of the girls’ parents and siblings have traveled in a convoy of family vans and sport utility vehicles from south Orange County. The parents are supportive but seem to resist hovering as competition times approach.

“I always let my children decide how busy they want to be. Heather wanted to do this,” says Marilyn Cutrona. “This is her second year. I think they work really well together, almost like a sport team in that they learn to work for the good of the team.”

The girls will go first to the spontaneous portion of the challenge. At this, they are without coaches or parents; just them and judges in a room. They have under 10 minutes to complete a verbal challenge. Once done here, they cannot divulge any details about the spontaneous event until the awards are handed out later that night.

After they are done at 10:30 a.m., the girls seem to think they did OK, and face a four-hour wait before taking Ratlantis on stage. They are too nervous to eat but slurp on some sodas.

Seated side by side on a wall outside the UCSB theater, the girls seem younger than usual. Their hair is in pigtails; their feet swing back and forth in black canvas Converse All-Stars. Maybe it is the hedgehog purse Lauren is wearing and the teddy bear tote Heather is clutching. They look like children with stuffed animals.

Finally, the girls take the stage to the theme song from “Mission: Impossible,” and the clock starts.

The girls do beautifully, perhaps the best they’ve ever done at their rat opera. The audience of parents and students applauds them. They have gotten a number of laughs, a good sign.

Outside, however, Lauren is in tears, and the others are consoling her. The theater stage was so dark that she could not see the buttons on the tape player. When she was to press the play button to start flute music the girls had taped, she hit rewind instead. But the girls regrouped wordlessly in mid-performance.

Kristin winged it, making a screechy flute sound herself while pretending to play a papier-ma^che instrument. Therese trilled a flute sound a moment later.

Another lesson in ingenuity and quick thinking.

After watching a few other teams, Heather and Lauren chat together in the Lyceum. They seem to think an Odyssey powerhouse, Judkins Middle School of Pismo Beach, is the team to beat.

Lauren: “If Judkins gets sixth, then I don’t think we’ll get higher.”

Heather: “No one misses the awards ceremony; everyone is there.”

Lauren: “Did Maureen cry last year when you didn’t place?”

Heather: “No. We still had fun. It’s OK after you leave the awards. We had fun at the party afterward. You won’t be scarred forever.”

*

The gym at UCSB is packed with about 5,000 Odyssey challengers and their entourages for the presentation of awards.

Moulton Elementary School takes second place. Aliso Viejo Middle School wins first in its category and is going to the world championships in Maryland, joining an estimated 13,000 students.

Finally it is time for the Classics category. Sixth- through third-place awards are presented, then the emcee pauses for a safety announcement.

Second place is announced, and the Ratlantis girls take it. They scramble down the bleacher stairs to the floor for their medals. They are ecstatic. It is the best they have ever done, and it is the last year they will play the Odyssey of the Mind challenge.

Although it would have been great to take first--which ends in a tie between Judkins and another school--second place means the long hours are over.

The team members will all be fanning out to high schools and other interests next year, as many Odyssey veterans do once they reach ninth grade.

Back at the hotel, they celebrate their victory with sparkling cider and a swim in the pool. Their parents clink champagne-filled plastic glasses, proud but happy to get their daughters back from the Odyssey.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

ORANGE COUNTY WINNERS

How Orange County teams placed in state Odyssey of the Mind competition April 19 at UC Santa Barbara:

Aliso Viejo Middle School

Aliso Viejo

First in Heroic Proportions

13th in “Balloonacy Cars”

Arroyo Vista Elementary School

Rancho Santa Margarita

10th in “Double Trouble”

Marco F. Forster Middle School

San Juan Capistrano

13th in “Double Trouble”

Hidden Hills Elementary School

Laguna Niguel

14th in “Heroic Proportions”

Huntington Beach High School

Huntington Beach

Fourth in “Double Trouble”

Moulton Elementary School

Laguna Niguel

Second in “Omerdroid”

Niguel Hills Middle School

Laguna Niguel

Second in “Classics . . . Can You Dig It?”

Sixth in “Omerdroid”

ODYSSEY FILE

The Odyssey of the Mind school program is a private, nonprofit organization based in Glassboro, N.J. Any public or private school, or youth group such as the Boys or Girls Club, may participate with annual membership of $190. That fee covers five packets of material per group.

Launched 19 years ago, OM, as it is known to fans, is “dedicated to stimulating and developing children’s and adults’ creative problem-solving abilities,” according to founder C. Samuel Micklus, professor emeritus at Rowan College of New Jersey.

Every August, the year’s five “problems” and their detailed instructions and guidelines are distributed to participating schools and organizations. The problems range from mechanical to verbal. Students have several months before regional tournaments commence, usually in February. Winners in elementary, middle and high school divisions move on to state competitions later in the spring, followed by world championships.

This year’s international event is in Maryland in June. There are Odyssey members in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and countries including Argentina, Brazil, China, Kazakhstan, Russia and the United Kingdom.

Odyssey says 1 million students participate in the program worldwide, whether in competition or in the classroom.

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OM Assn. Inc.

P.O. Box 547, Glassboro, NJ 08028.

(609) 881-1603

Odyssey of the Mind also has a Web site with detailed instructions and updates on problems: https://www.odyssey.org.