Here’s a universal truth they don’t print in the Odyssey of the Mind handbook:
Something will go wrong.
Possibly everything.
On competition day, glitter will fall off the set.
A prop will snap in half like a breadstick.
Someone will forget their line—or worse, forget their pants.
A glue gun will rebel. The script will vanish. Someone will suddenly realize they’re allergic to duct tape.
And in that moment—standing in the hallway of a middle school, surrounded by sleep-deprived kids wearing cardboard armor and feathers—you will ask yourself, “What fresh chaos is this?”
Welcome to OM.
I’ve coached enough teams to know: you can plan for months, rehearse until the lines are etched into your dreams, build and rebuild contraptions with NASA-level precision—and still, on the day of, chaos will descend like a caffeinated squirrel in a bounce house.
Over the years, my teams have had trees fall mid-performance, inflatable structures puncture dramatically, and costumes explode—not on purpose, though they made quite the visual. One year, a key hinge on their backdrop broke just twenty minutes before their World Finals performance. I looked at their panicked faces and said the only thing I could:
“Treat it like a spontaneous problem. Use what you’ve got. Do your best.”
They huddled. Brainstormed. Then—brilliantly—they broke a witch’s broom in half and used it to replace the hinge.
They won the long-term competition.
It was gut-wrenching to watch them struggle through that moment. Every instinct in me wanted to swoop in and fix it. But they didn’t need me. They needed the problem. And they needed to learn that they already had what it took to solve it.
That’s the heart of OM.
Because in OM, you’re not just building sets and skits—you’re building resilience.
You’re building the muscles of improvisation, creativity, and grace under fire.
You’re learning that the story isn’t over just because something breaks. In fact, the real story often begins there.
Here’s what I’ve come to love about OM chaos:
It’s not a bug—it’s a feature.
The breakdowns are the magic.
You want kids to grow up with grit? Let them duct tape a broken prop five minutes before showtime and still take a bow. You want them to feel confident in their creativity? Let them invent a plot fix on the spot and get the audience to laugh like it was intentional.
OM isn’t about perfection. It’s about process. It’s about play. It’s about saying “yes, and” when life says “nope.”
So when everything breaks on competition day, do this:
Smile. Laugh. Take a breath.
Let the kids lead. Trust the chaos.
And remember—you’re not here to control the story.
You’re here to help them tell it, whatever it becomes.
And if that includes a glue gun explosion, a rogue line delivery, and a last-minute plot twist that somehow involves a unicycle… well, all the better.
Because that’s OM.
And in this universe, that is the win.
