A team of talented and dedicated Titans have spent this winter preparing and practicing for a competition that would last mere minutes and on Saturday, March 5, the date of the much anticipated contest, they won.

These students competed in a program called Odyssey of the Mind, a competition based off of the famous “Rube Goldberg machines.” The teams were responsible for inventing a contraption that would perform a simple task in an unnecessarily complex and indirect way. T.C. freshmen and teammates Emily Schlman, Rosa Procaceino, Stephanie Slaven, Christian Contreras, Brendan Kerwin, and Sydney Schaedal chose a theme of “Lord GaGa’s Trash-ion Show.”

The simple task performed was shooting glitter into the air. The team knew from the beginning that a glitter bomb was going to be incorporated into their show and it seemed like the perfect goal of their machine. Also in their performance were a cappella singing breaks and inventive trash-inspired outfits, both of which added to their victory over Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax County.

As the act was brought to a close, the judges swarmed the competitors, asking questions and offering praise. Out of the 200 points possible for the long term scoring, T.C.’s team earned 193 points, most of which was based on the device and routine’s creativity and complexity.

Ninth graders at T.C. who make up the Odyssey of the Mind team beat their only competition, Thomas Jefferson High School.

After being asked if the team had a teacher sponsor, members fell silent and then jokingly responded that they have parent sponsors. Schaedal began competing in the Odyssey program as fourth grader and started again last year in the middle school division devising a team of fellow Francis C. Hammond middle schoolers. According to the team, they did much better this year than last and predict that they will continue participating throughout their high school careers, hopefully bringing home more wins to this underappreciated event.