Source: The Catskill Daily Mail
By: Jim Planck
TANNERSVILLE — Odyssey of the Mind has a new World Champion, and it is no less than one of New York State’s smaller districts — Greene County’s own Hunter-Tannersville Central School District.
In short, HTC has performed the role of giant slayer in defeating numerous districts along the way — many significantly larger — as it made its way through regional and state competitions to the world finals in Michigan this past week, to bring home a World Championship trophy.
And the competition truly was of the “world,” with not only teams from all the other states, but international competition as well, and HTC Superintendent of Schools Dr. Patrick Darfler-Sweeney said Tuesday he is both very happy for the district and extremely proud of the OM team.
“I’m ecstatic,” said Darfler-Sweeney.
“Considering that we’re a small rural district in New York, and we won the regional competition, then the competition at the state (level), and then went to Michigan and won World Champion,” he said, “it’s wonderful.”
Darfler-Sweeney noted that small districts do not get a helping handicap in the competitions.
“There’s no differentiation given for the size of the school,” he said, “so here’s little Hunter-Tannersville going up against essentially everybody.”
Darfler-Sweeney said that among the competitors were three teams from South Korea, two from Singapore, plus a team each from Mexico and Poland — all vying for the same crown.
They also competed, of course, against another 39 teams from all over the United States, including other teams from New York state.
Displaying the list of competitors and their finishing scores, Darfler-Sweeney noted, “There is the number-one-rated high school in New York State in there (that we beat).”
Darfler-Sweeney said the competition has ratings for Long Term, Style and Spontaneous categories, and that Spontaneous is especially tricky because there is no preparation possible for it.
“To hit it out of the park like this,” he said, “is amazing.”
“They’re judged on the project, its performance, its execution, the writing, and the acting,” Darfler-Sweeney said, “and here’s Hunter-Tannersville standing up and beating all these teams.”
“It’s incredible,” he said. “I find it hard to believe a little school like this would be World Champion.”
Darfler-Sweeney said the team is well honed.
“They’ve been working together as a group, in one variation or another, for the past six or seven years,” he said. “They’re all seniors except one, who is a junior.”
Darfler-Sweeney said that as proud as he is for the district, it’s even more significant for the team members, as they get ready to move on into the world.
“It’s a big deal for the school,” he said, “but it’s an even bigger deal for them,” noting that the graduating seniors will take this memory and experience with them on into life.
“What a wonderful imprint,” he said.
So who are the Odyssey of the Mind World Champions?
They are Troy Bates, William Garrison, Neal Statts, Dylan Endy, and Emily Farrell, with Farrell being the sole junior on the team.
The team coaches are long-standing Odyssey of the Mind coaches of excellence at HTC, Rich and Dawn Outtrim.
Rich Outtrim said Tuesday that as the team progressed from level to level, winning their way to Michigan, each success helped them along.
“You can feel the kids get more confident in what they do,” he said, “getting stronger and better.”
Outtrim said the World Championships are a five day event, with 827 teams competing on five different problems.
“Our team competed against 47 teams,” he said, with HTC competing in Problem 2, called The Email Must Go Through, in Division III.
“It had to be a tangible representation of an email, that had to travel through a network server and through a spam filter,” Outtrim said, “without any of the team members touching it.”
Outtrim said that in the three ratings, HTC finished first in Long Term, fourth in Style, and seventh in Spontaneous — which gave them a final score of 340.54 points, a full five points ahead of the next best team, a group from Lansdale, Pa., who in turn just beat out the team from Gdansk, Poland, by about a point and a half, so the competition was strong at the top.
Outtrim said that when the announcement was made at the Saturday night awards ceremony that the HTC students had won, “They all jumped about ten feet in the air,” he said.
Outtrim said the students were called on stage and met the founder of the OM program and his son, who now conducts most of the campaign, plus the NYS OM director, as well as the judges, and that it was a wonderful event.
“The kids got medals,” he said, “and we’ve got a trophy that’s about seven-and-a-half feet high.”
And well-deserved it is.
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To reach reporter Jim Planck, call 518-943-2100, ext. 3324, or e-mail jplanck@thedailymail.net.