(9/2003) - Competition is a powerful incentive. The opportunity to compete attracted a team of mismatched, middle-school boys to invest their time into Odyssey. It dangled the reward – the promise of travel, to Colorado that year, if the boys fared well at the local tournament. It fueled the ego – the belief that even with their untested skills, the boys had the character and capacity that would give them the ability to win. And this incentive carried our team onward, especially after turning in some good performances against other rookie teams that were being developed at the school in preliminary spontaneous and long-term problem practice sessions.

Naturally, retaining the competitive edge became somewhat of a challenge as the mundane issues of establishing an Odyssey team took hold. Demonstrating the safe use of a circular saw or an electric drill, or teaching proper tool room habits, for examples, were trivial, but necessary, rituals of regimen. And even though all of these lessons had been covered in the required school shop curriculum, the sometimes forceful relearning of these supposedly familiar subjects made the call to glory distant and unreal.

The idea of competition at this age level (especially among males) is a simple affair forged on athletic fields and in classroom venues. In the world of middle-school boys, those who are recognized as the finest not only got the greatest praise but also got to be viewed as the “first among peers.” Accordingly, in the battle for the team alpha slots, individual personalities emerged or receded and personal levels of enthusiasm waxed and waned. All the while, time kept slipping by as energies that otherwise would have been spent on solving the Odyssey of the Mind problem at hand were directed elsewhere.

There is, of course, a point in a project-oriented activity where self-respect is at stake that evokes a feeling of despair - that’s when one gauges the completion rate against the deadline schedule and finds the balance woefully tipped towards a very possible public failure. By now internecine rivalry has taken its toll on the team’s size. Yet nobody, no parent nor coach, could have forced those who remained to see reason enough to begin working together constructively. That only happens when there is a universal acceptance of responsibility to self and to teammates, perhaps only acquired with extreme anxiety, that transcends the idea of competing for personal gain. Somehow, there is a complete refocusing of competitive priorities that enables an advanced understanding of teamwork never likely to have been experienced before.

To be sure, the journey towards becoming a team seems imperceptibly slow. It is hard to visualize the progression that ends in a greater acceptance of ideas, of efforts and of personal mannerisms, even if some of these could be a little bothersome. One can sense the results though. If anything, the original priorities, getting out of school to travel to Colorado to compete in the big show at the World Finals or even doing well at the local tournament, were disappearing quickly over the horizon.

And it wasn’t that competitive juices were drying up either. Our boys were looking to account well in the spirit of Odyssey of the Mind. They took pride in their efforts to scrounge for and use scraps and remnants, in how they designed mechanisms so that their structures would work, and in how they worked without adult direction. So, the rusted wheels did wobble and squeak, the cuts were not exactly squared, and the backdrops were of a quality one would expect from, well, those who normally found outlets other than art and sewing. Despite it all, the boys believed that the creativity of their presentation and the innovation embedded in their props would match up favorably against anybody in their bracket.

They didn’t get to go to Colorado that year. It didn’t turn out to be an issue for them after all. The excitement of attending the state tournament, the pride in turning in their best performance, the appreciation of other team efforts, and perhaps, the burger and fries at the end of the day, gave a lot more fulfillment than ever was expected. In the end, our boys’ original concepts of competition, of teamwork, of themselves and of others appeared transformed into understandings much more meaningful, as they had to gain all this new-found knowledge on their own.