Odyssey of the Mind

New York Regions 4 & 7

September 9, 2024

Message from Your Regional Directors

It's the start of a new school year, which also brings a new Odyssey of the Mind season! Even though the tournaments are not until March 2025, planning for them is already underway. There is a new Odyssey of the Mind website. Make sure to read below for important information on how to register your school membership as well as adding teams.

If you are not familiar with Odyssey of the Mind, it is an international educational program that provides creative problem-solving opportunities for students of all ages. The program challenges teams to solve open-ended problems that range from building mechanical devices to presenting clever and unusual interpretations of literary classics. Teams test their creative solutions at competitions held on the local, state, and world levels.

Questar III coordinates the New York State Region 4 tournament for teams in Rensselaer, Columbia and Greene counties each year.

Capital Region BOCES coordinates the New York State Region 7 tournament for teams in Albany, Schenectady, Schoharie, and southern Saratoga counties.

Please reach out to your region if you have any questions or concerns. You can find a listing of the school districts in each region below if you are not sure which region your school is in.

We are looking forward to a great year of problem solving, creativity and FUN!

Sincerely,

Annie Gersztoff, Region 7 Director

Maureen Squier, Region 4 Director

Problems are now available!

You can now short descriptions of the problems for the 2024-25 school year. You cannot see the full problem until you have signed up as a member with Creative Competitions, Inc. Information on how to do that is below.

You can also find information on the problems HERE.

New Odyssey Website

Odyssey of the Mind is finishing work on a new website for members. You can find instructions on how to sign up HERE.

Some things to note:

Each membership will have an 8-digit code associated with your account
The District Coordinator/main contact who sets up the membership has the ability to add teams.

Coaches should check with their District Coordinator to see how teams will be added

Once a registration is approved, the coach can log-in to their profile/account right away. However, teams will not be able to log-in to the Members Area until full payment is received (credit card, check, or a PO attached to registration)

You will not be able to see the full problems until the payment is received, but you can find the problem synopses below.

The website is still under construction. We will send out updates on the new website as we receive them, so stay tuned!

Coach Training

Virtual coach training will be held on Wednesday November 13th at 6:30pm. This will be done over Zoom and will be approximately 60 minutes.

Click HERE to register.

Head Judge Training

Head Judge/Problem Captain training will be in-person this year. See details below:

When: Saturday January 11, 8:30am

Where: Chenango Valley Middle/High School

221 Chenango Bridge Road, Binghamton NY 13904

More details will follow.

Judges & Volunteers

Please remember that ALL teams are required to provide 1 judge and 1 volunteer each. Please start recruiting early. The success of our tournaments depends on having great volunteers and judges.

Thank you!