Bordering On Genius Tiny School Near The Canadian Border Has Become A National Powerhouse In Odyssey Of The Mind

This town is tiny and poor, but its children are not small-minded.

The wee city on the Canadian border is sending a team next week to the Odyssey of the Mind world finals, an intellectual Olympics for school children.

It’s no fluke, no flash in the pan.

Northport is a nationally known powerhouse when it comes to Odyssey of the Mind. This is the third team to go to the world finals in six years. Last year, they finished 13th in their division.

The students are debunking the popular myth that big schools with lots of money produce smarter students.

“I think you can train creativity quite easily,” said teacher Kris Nesse, Odyssey coach for 12 years. “I believe from the depths of my soul that every kid is capable.”

Of the 110 students at Northport High’s eighth through 12th grades, three-quarters are poor enough to get a free lunch.

In many larger schools, Odyssey of the Mind is classroom work for students in the gifted and talented programs.

At Northport, almost half of the high school students meet after school as many as three days a week to participate in Odyssey of the Mind.

The 10th-12th grade team beat out Richland High School last month to advance to world finals, which begin Tuesday in Knoxville, Tenn.

Just as Nesse doesn’t buy the big school, smarter-students theory, her team doesn’t either. But they do have a sense of humor about it.

“I think the contamination from Cominco (a smelter a few miles upstream on the Columbia River) made us smart,” said Joe DuFresne, 15. “It’s a genetic mutation or something.”

In fact being small has its advantages. Gifted students at big schools are often labeled nerds or brains.

“Everybody’s a geek in Northport,” DuFresne said.

Besides teaching innovative problem-solving skills, Odyssey of the Mind creates a tight social community.

“There’s not a lot to do in Northport,” said Principal Karlene Hayward. “The biggest thing to happen here is the store started carrying sub sandwiches.”

There is no fast-food restaurant, no latte stand, not even a real grocery store.

At a recent afternoon practice, former Northport students stopped by to hang out. When Nesse had to leave early, the session turned into a water fight.

Odyssey of the Mind is a national association that provides educators with new ideas for teaching problemsolving and innovative thinking.

Every fall, the association publishes a set of challenges. The teams come up with solutions and offer them at competitions, first on a regional level and then on an international level.

Northport sent three teams to the state match this year. The champion team took on the task of building a balsa-wood structure weighing less than 18 grams.

During a presentation, they put the structure under weight and torque until it collapses. The structure that bears the most weight wins. Teams get extra points for style and presentation.

Team members Azie Hulsey, 16, and Zach Knudsen, 17, built several structures. Other team members wrote a skit to present and test the structure.

Melissa Dinger suggested playing off the story of Pandora’s Box.

In their skit, which must be done without words, Pandora opens a box releasing the evils of war and pestilence on the world. While the evils place the weights on the structure until it breaks, Pandora also releases hope from the box.

As the skit ends, hope learns to coexist on Earth with evil.

“It’s not like it’s new plot. Everybody’s heard the story of Pandora’s box,” Dinger said modestly. “When did we read that? Sixth grade?”

In addition to the weight contest and skit, the team will compete in a surprise category, which may involve a question or a hands-on problem.

The Northport students admit they have one disadvantage: money. It’s going to cost $6,000 for the seven students and Nesse to drive to Seattle and fly to Tennessee for the competition next week. There are no big businesses, no rich families, no secret benefactors to tap.

They were still $800 short on Friday.

“My husband is about to hide my credit cards from me,” Nesse said. “This is the hardest part. We are so burned out on fund-raising. I hate it.”

The school is begging money from area residents and businesses, but the community is about tapped out.

The middle school students recently raised $10,000 for a trip to Seattle. “This is an area where some kids live here their entire lives and never cross the border to Canada or go to Spokane because their families can’t afford the gas money,” Principal Hayward said.

Hayward and Nesse dread the day that two teams win the state competition and advance to the world level.

“We might have to say, ‘I’m sorry, but you can’t go,”’ Hayward said.

Nesse said for all the self-esteem her students get from winning, she would prefer they take second place.

“It’s great for our kids to feel like they can compete anywhere, against anyone,” she said. “But maybe they would get almost as much benefit by coming in second. And then we wouldn’t have to face the money problem.”