Upper St. Clair Students' Odyssey Will Take Them To Iowa

UPPER ST. CLAIR, PA - Two teams of Upper St. Clair students will spend a weekend at Iowa State University next month competing in Odyssey of the Mind World Finals. Odyssey of the Mind is an international creative problem-solving program for K-12 and college students.

The two teams, from Upper St. Clair High School and Boyce Middle School qualified for the finals by recently finishing first in their respective problem/division at the state finals.

The high school team tied for first place in the Division III classics problem. Team members include Victoria Cuba, Brianna Lin, Joseph Markovitz, Max Murtough, Sammie Seewald, Constantine Tripodes and Eric Wang. Coaches include Laura Murtough, Meridith Markovitz and Stacey Seewald.

“This team of ninth graders created a mockumentary of the classic novel Peter Pan,” Murtough said in a district release. “Combining traditional documentary elements such as interviews, a voiceover and behind the scenes action, they created a funny, fictional account of the classic story.”

The Boyce team, which solved the Division I technical problem, includes Jake Casares, Anastasia Gzikowski, Esha Lathia, Peter Markovitz, Owen Mucho, Ben Murtough and Ben Seewald. The team also is coached by Markovitz, Seewald and Murtough.

“This team was tasked with creating an original emoji that was once famous but now forgotten,” Murtough said. “They were also required to devise three storyteller emojis that each performed a different function: one grew in size, one changed from one emoji to another and one turned into a team member. The biggest challenge for this problem was to perform with sounds, but no spoken words.”

Photos via Upper St. Clair School District.