On May 30, the PHS Odyssey of the Mind team placed 10th at the Odyssey of the Minds World Finals, the highest placement in PHS history. Starting their preparation in September, the four-member team selected the theme “Classics ... the Epic Quest,” in which they were tasked with writing their own epic hero’s journey. This year, the team performed a story about characters overcoming common teenage problems, such as low self-esteem.
“I played Julius, [who] was the hero of our performance, but he also works with the sidekick Mark, played by Julia Li [’27],” said Marcus Strum ’27, a member of the team. “By World Finals, we had settled on major lessons that we were telling through our story, so we had a beast character, which represented ... insecurity.”
The team selected this challenge rather than the other options, such as programming a robotic sidekick, because they wanted the competition to be a creative outlet.
“We chose this problem ... [because] we figured that we didn’t want to have to have the extra technical barrier,” said Strum. “We wanted to have it to be more open ... [to] cool stuff with our set.”
After selecting their theme and writing the script, the team needed to find two more members, as their performance required six actors. One person who agreed to help perform and join the team was Noah Lee ’27, a member of the club last year.
“I [didn’t] feel like it was a burden,” said Lee. “I really wanted to do it because I had such a fun experience last year. I was really excited to [participate] again and have fun.” After placing second at state finals, the team used the $4000 earned from hosting the Odyssey of the Mind New Jersey State Finals to help fund their trip to World Finals. Lee emphasized that the opportunity for different teams to gather at World Finals from all across the globe made it a unique experience.
“I learned that people can have vastly different lives than I do, even though we’re in the same grade,” said Lee. “Even within such a [similar group], there’s a vast amount of different experiences.”
Odyssey of the Mind is different from other competitions because of the rubric’s more subjective nature, as teams can take on various interpretations of the same requirements. Strum learned that a more thematic presentation may have been the key to their success.
“Last year, part of the reason why I didn’t go far in the competition with my team was because there wasn’t any special meaning or impact behind what we were conveying in our performance,” said Strum. “But this year, we’ve really tried to make everything symbolic, and I think that’s why we got so far going to Worlds.”