Judging Odyssey, the report

I spent Saturday as a Spontaneous Problem judge at the Odyssey of the Mind competition. The day went pretty well. It was crazy, but in a different way from when you are a coach. (Not the least of which is that I could sleep the night before.) I didn't see much of the long term competition, but doing spontaneous was interesting because the coaches never get to see it...just the kids on the team. So it made me feel special that way! I also feel a lot more competent now that its over and I see the people I worked with. :)
Suprisingly I had a St. Rita team in my problem, and more surprisingly it was the kids I coached last year (at least 1/2 the team)! They were wonderful at spontaneous. It was a hands-on problem (meaning that they had to solve it using "tools" and not just verbally). They worked really well together and did a great job! I was very proud of them (and honestly, quite surprised). I could tell that some of it was from having done practice sessions, since a bunch of the teams clearly had not done much hands-on practice. Which means even my hard work from last year is still reaping benefits for these kids, so that's great news too!
I really had fun judging. The only drawback was the misgivings I had about the rest of my judging team. They just didn't seem to get it that the kids really are not supposed to get advice from the judges. Sure we want them to do well on a level playing field, but the rules are supposed to be somewhat ambiguous to allow for creative interpretation. In fact the judging team was a little creative with the interpretation...but maybe I was just over reacting.
Anyway I did get to see a couple of performances of the long term problem including the St. Rita primary (K-2) team. They were cute as expected. :)