Team Competes and Wins Top Honors—Without School Sponsorship

They call themselves a "pythagamob," a word they made up that is used to describe a large group of nerds who meet in a basement a few times every week.

Unfortunately, they haven't been able to get the support from the district, and it could be because of continuing budget issues.

This "pythagamob" is comprised of members of the Odyssey of the Mind team—called the Improvables, and including students from the and .

As described on the program’s website, Odyssey of the Mind is an international educational program that provides students with opportunities to employ creative problem-solving skills.

Sponsorships are required to participate in competitions—unfortunately, those have not come from the school.

Instead, the team competed in its most recent tournament with a sponsorship from its namesake, the Improvables, an improvisational comedy troupe.

For that March 5 competition, the group was unable to obtain sponsorship from either the Bridgewater-Raritan Middle School or Eisenhower Intermediate so the team's coach, Randi Schweriner, turned to the Improvables because she is a member of the group herself.

In these competitions, teams compete to solve problems given to them by the program’s organizers. Problems are divided into five different groupings, namely mechanical/vehicle, technical performance, classics, structure and performance.

Team member, and eighth-grade student, Matthew Schueler spoke out about his team's latest triumph, despite the lack of a sponsorship, at the March 8 board of education meeting.

"[Our team] beat ten other teams to win first place,” he said of the outcome of the regional tournament March 5. “We are all very excited that we will now be moving on to compete in the state tournament.”

Schueler touched on the fact that the organization did not receive a sponsorship from the district, and said he wished the team could have been able to represent its schools.

"[But] we did not need assistance of any kind from the school district,” he said.

According to Schweriner, the families took it upon themselves to put up all the money for membership and tournament fees, but a group is required to be affiliated with either a school or community organization to compete in the competitions.

Superintendent of Schools Michael Schilder said it is often a matter of insurance and liability with having clubs run when there are no funds to pay for it.

“If you don’t have board oversight in a club and the club is outside the school and no staff member is supervising, there is a liability issue,” he said.

"It is unfortunate the team couldn't compete under the Bridgewater-Raritan Middle School," he added. "We will look into it."

Schilder said he does believe a stipend to pay for a teacher to supervise the program was not cut from the budget, so he will look into why the position was not filled.

In this same vein, Schueler addressed the lack of a robotics team at the middle school, saying that there are many athletics opportunities available around the district, but not ones for educational purposes.

“It would be great if there were some opportunities available to exercise our minds as well,” he said.

But with all the recent budget cuts, the district has not been able to add any clubs, especially as it has been eliminating many over the past year, Schilder said.

"Is it something we can look at?" he asked. "Sure. But it comes down to dollars and cents."

Schilder said there was never a robotics team at the middle school, only the high school, but the money is not available to add it now.

In the past year, budget cuts have forced the district to eliminate clubs in the middle school. At this time, many clubs at the are operating under a set up by the district before this school year began.

Board President Jeffrey Brookner said the board is looking ahead toward forming a committee to look into clubs that have been eliminated, but that will happen after the budget season.

“The charge to the committee would be to look at participation in all intermediate and middle school clubs, and determine different ideas," he said.