Haddonfield Students Go to Odyssey of the Mind Championship

Seven Haddonfield students from Central Elementary School will go for the gold at the Odyssey of the Mind world championships, and you can help them get there.

The students won silver at the New Jersey competition on April 13. Now, they move on to the 2013 Odyssey of the Mind World Finals, May 22-25 at Michigan State University. The team is the first from Haddonfield to reach that level.

Odyssey of the Mind has student teams learn creative problem-solving through interdisciplinary projects. The Central School team designed a solution to a problem called “ARTchitecture: The Musical.” The students wrote and performed an original musical comedy that features a replica of an architectural structure built between 1000 and 1600 AD. In the performance, three works of art disappear and two characters go on a quest to find them.

The projects are judged on mechanical design, technical performance, structure and performing arts. Teams are also judged on a spontaneous exercise of verbal or construction challenges.

Representing Haddonfield at the world championships are fifth-graders Matt Eyles and Lillian Leimkuhler, fourth-graders Danny Cavanna and Jesse Eible Hargro, and third-graders Jack Eyles, Chase Ricci and T.J. Smith. They’re coached by parent volunteers Mark Cavanna and Tracey Ricci, and Cydnee Perman is the adviser.

Odyssey of the Mind championships will cost the team $7,500 in an entry fee, plus lodging expenses. The team is raising money through a “jail and bail” fundraiser at P.J. Whelihan’s on Haddon Avenue, April 28, 4-7 p.m. Celebrity jailbirds will spend time behind bars at the bar and will be bailed with donations to the team.