Some of the most imaginative young minds in the state came to Ewing High School last month to test their creativity during the annual Odyssey of the Mind tournament. Behind the scenes, however, three Ewing alumni spent months organizing the event using the very problem-solving skills they learned when they competed in the tournament.
Nick Pankiewicz, New Jersey Odyssey of the Mind association director, his wife Sarah Pankiewicz, assistant association director, and Kristin Hingstman, a state captain, are all graduates of Ewing High School. After competing in the tournament when they were in school—Nick is class of 1999, Sarah class of 2000 and Hingstman class of 1998—the alumni came back to pass on their love of Odyssey of the Mind to the future generations.
“Honestly, when it got down to it, it’s still what I look back on during the four years of high school as the most enjoyable experience I had,” Nick said.
Odyssey of the Mind is an international problem-solving tournament for students in Kindergarten through 12th grade. Unlike traditional academic competitions that focus on one subject area, Odyssey of the Mind challenges students to use their creativity to solve problems that range from performing their own interpretation of literary classics to building mechanical devices.
With such a wide range of subject material, the competition attracts an even wider range of students. About 25 countries from around the world participate in Odyssey of the Mind, including thousands of teams from the United States. New Jersey is not only home to more than 260 teams, but it is the birthplace of Odyssey of the Mind. The competition was founded in 1978 by Glassboro State (now Rowan University) professor Sam Micklus, and it has only grown more diverse since its inception.
“There’s a place for every kid in this program,” Hingstman said.
Bringing so many students together is one thing, Sarah said, but the power behind Odyssey of the Mind’s huge student body is the ability to teach everyone how to work together toward a common goal.
“When I was competing I think the biggest thing I got out of it was you learned how to work as a team,” Sarah said. “When you take a bunch of high school students with strong opinions and in our case, smarts, and you put all of us together we’re learning, we’re working together, and having fun.”
Hingstman began competing in Odyssey of the Mind when she was in eighth grade, and was able to watch her team grow all the way through her senior year. Members of the team, who remain some her best friends, became the first group from Ewing High School to make it to the world finals.
When it was announced that Hingstman’s team was going to the world finals, she remembers jumping up and down and crying out of excitement. While the finals were held in Disney World that year, today Odyssey of the Mind takes over a college campus for one week over the summer.
“That flavor you get at world finals, it truly is world represented,” Hingstman, who is now a judge at world finals, said.
The nature of the program is highly competitive, making Hingstman’s accomplishment of getting to world finals no small feat.
There are two main components to the Odyssey of the Mind competition. First is the long-term performance, which is the problem teams work to solve throughout the year. These problems are often complex and include many different critical thinking skills. One long-term problem this year required students to build and then drive a no-cycle recycle device. It had to pick up discarded items, adapt them in some way and deliver them to places to be reused.
The second component is the spontaneous portion. Each team is given a problem when they walk into the room and they have must solve it in a certain amount of time. Spontaneous problems are broken down into three categories: verbal, hands on and verbal hands on.
The verbal problems are answering questions and verbal hands on problems involve telling a story while incorporating a prop. For the hands on problems, students are typically asked to build something. Nick said one example of a hands on problem is when students are given a grid with ping pong balls on it. When a fan turns on, students have to find a way to make sure the ping pong balls don’t move using objects provided.
Over the course of the year, students practice a wide variety of spontaneous problems to prepare themselves for the tournament.
“You not only teach yourself how to think quickly because you have three to five minutes to do something, but it teaches you to think on your feet and then come up with creative answers,” Nick said. “The more you practice, the more you get into it, the more you start thinking that way, and it really starts to help.”
This creative quick thinking with friends leads to students viewing Odyssey of the Mind as more of a fun social activity rather than a learning experience. Antheil Elementary School students shared their thoughts about competing in this year’s tournament in written statements provided by the district to the Observer.
Alexandra Krohne, a fifth grader, said she joined Odyssey of the Mind because she wanted to meet new people and let her creativity flow. Fourth grader Liam Ta and fifth grader Matthew Treder both said they joined because they thought it would be a fun experience, and Graham Walter, a fifth grader, said his favorite part of the tournament was getting to spend time with his team.
“My favorite part about competing in the tournament is that all these teams, wherever they come from, came and put all they’ve got into it,” said Nicholas Benedetti, a fourth grader. His team placed third in the state tournament.
The students’ attitude toward Odyssey of the Mind is exactly what the organizers hoped would happen. Students are learning while having fun.
“When you get down to it, in some ways it’s almost sneaky the skills you learn from this,” Nick said. “I’m hoping that kids ultimately have fun. They’ll probably not even realize the skills they’re picking up on until later in life.”
The three Ewing alumni still carry the skills they learned with them more than two decades ago. Hingstman taught high school choral music and is currently workign on earning her master’s degree in choral conducting from the University of Delaware. Sarah works for the New Jersey State Assembly.
“In my full time job I’m a technology director for an ad agency in Philadelphia and every day is a problem, so to speak, to solve,” Nick said, adding that whether he’s getting something to a client sooner than expected or a project is running behind, he’s ready to think of a creative solution. “This program has given me a great grounding for me to be extremely successful at my full time job.”
Odyssey of the Mind was a life-changing experience for Nick, Sarah and Hingstman—Nick and Sarah, who are now married, initially got to know one another through the tournament—but they didn’t necessarily plan to still be involved with the program after graduating.
“As a kid you don’t see yourself here [judging], but as you get older you realize how much you love the program, and you keep getting more and more involved just to give back,” Sarah said.
It may not have been planned, but all three Odyssey of the Mind board members are a perfect fit for the job. Hingstman’s mom Marlene was a teacher in the district and taught the Odyssey of the Mind teams for close to 20 years. Nick’s mother and Sarah’s mother-in-law Caren Pankiewicz is executive secretary Ewing Schools Superintendent Michael Nitti, and she helped organize the event this year at the high school.
While the state tournament isn’t held in Ewing every year, its central location in the state paired with the organizers’ close ties to the school make it the ideal location.
“Ewing is awesome and we love coming here because we can arrange it where we can come take over the school,” Nick said. “The administration, janitors, teachers are all great.”
No matter where the tournament is held, however, the best time of year for the Odyssey of the Mind organizers is the day when students finally get to put their hard work to the test.
“Honestly, I get choked up sometimes,” Nick said. Watching a team perform a problem that they’ve worked on all year or support one another through a spontaneous problem is the highlight of every competition.
The same feelings of pride, accomplishment and excitement that Nick, Sarah and Hingstman had when they were students is how being passed along to the next generation of Odyssey of the Mind graduates.
“The best lesson I learned from Odyssey of the Mind was that, win or lose, we know that we put in enough effort to accomplish anything,” Benedetti wrote.
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