Drama, engineering, singing, comedy and fun - these are all things Northampton Area School District students got to experience at the Northeast Pennsylvania Regional Odyssey of the Mind competition Feb. 25.

Odyssey of the Mind is a creative problem-solving program that students can compete in with teams of five to seven students. Students choose from five problems and work for several months to come up with a solution to meet the problem requirements. Some require building a vehicle that moves, a device that performs an action, a balsa wood structure that can hold weight or using humor or singing to entertain an audience. Students need to write and act out a script and design and build the sets, props and costumes for their performance. Everything is done by the students, so they can feel proud of what they came up with.

NASD had seven teams compete in the competition Feb. 25. There was one team each from Moore Elementary School, George Wolf Elementary School, Siegfried Elementary School, Lehigh Elementary School and Northampton Area High School. There were also two teams from Northampton Area Middle School. The students said they had a great time and were proud of the work they put into it.

Brady Davis-Luizer, grade 8, said, “It felt really good walking off that stage. It felt like we were on top of the world.”

Four Northampton teams will advance to the state competition April 1. The NAHS team, coached by Kara Retlick, placed first in its division for the classics problem. The NAMS team, coached by Alana Heller, placed second in its division for the classics problem; the other NAMS team, coached by Nick Takacs, placed third in its division of the balsa wood problem. The Lehigh Elementary team, coached by Marisa Kelly, placed second in its division of the vehicle problem.

Charlize Padilla, grade 5, said, “I want to win this for my school!”

Best of luck to all the teams competing in the state competition.

New teams will begin forming in NASD at the start of the new academic year.