NoVA
East Odyssey of the Mind
Current Newsletter
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Previous Newsletters: First Coordinators Newsletter - September 2007.doc Second Coordinators Newsletter - October 7 2007.doc |
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| Third
Coordinators Newsletter November 2007 |
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Dear Coordinators:
We hope you are well underway in a great year of Odyssey of the Mind creativity and fun. Please let us know if we can help you and your teams. Following are some reminders of important upcoming dates. As always, please share this information with our coaches—feel free to simply forward this newsletter and its attachments.
Coaches Training is this upcoming Saturday, November 17, 2007 at Mark Twain Middle School from 8:30 a.m. until around 1. There will also be an optional “Spontaneous Master’s” class offered for those who would like to take it from 1 to 2. Registration will begin at 8, followed by the program at 8:30. Light breakfast foods will be available until the program begins. The training will include sessions for beginning, advanced, and primary coaches, as well as sessions on spontaneous problems, creativity, and style. There is a fee for training (to cover the costs of it) of $20 per person. Attached is a coach’s registration form, which will help a lot with time control if your coaches have it filled out prior to arrival. .
An informal coaches meeting will be held the evening of January 8, 2008 at Rose Hill Elementary School at 7:00 p.m. At this meeting coaches can talk to Regional Meet problem captains and each other about their problems and how their teams are progressing.
FOR CLASSICS/Problem 3/”The Wonderful Muses” Coaches Only: Your problem captain, Dani Kehoe, will be out of town January 8. Please advise your Problem 3/The Wonderful Muses coaches that Dani will be inviting them to a special meeting in January. These coaches may prefer to skip the January 8 meeting since Dani won’t be there that night. If you can, it would also be very helpful if you would please also email Dani (DaniKehoe@aol.com) with the name and email addresses of your Problem 3/The Wonderful Muses coaches—she can’t put together the special meeting for these coaches until she knows who they are, and we won’t know that until after registration closes on December 21. If she hears from you ahead of time, she can schedule the meeting earlier, which may prove more convenient for the coaches.
The online registration process for the Regional Meet on March 15, 2008 at Hayfield Secondary School will be the same as the one we used the last two years, although with (of course) different deadlines this year. Registration will done online (although we will certainly make alternative registration arrangements for teams whose coaches do not have access to computers. Please let Pam Wilkie (WilkieP@fccps.org) know as soon as possible if any of your coaches will need an alternative registration process.
Registration for our March 15 tournament will open December 1 and run through December 21, 2007. The first step in registering online will be entering the team’s judge’s name and email address—the computer system will check the judge’s email address to make sure it works, and then send back an identification number for the coach (or coordinator, if the coordinator is doing the registration) to use to continue the registration process. Hence, it’s very important to advise your coaches to line up their judges as soon as possible!
Registration deadline is December 21, 2007. The registration fee this year will remain at the $50 per team level it was last year. We are happy to report we have managed cost increases without having to raise registration fees again. Registration fees cannot be submitted online, and so must be mailed (postmarked no later than December 21, 2007) to our treasurer, Cerasela Cristei, at 215 Park St, NE, Vienna, VA 22180.
A complete registration includes:
- $50 team registration fee, mailed to to Cerasela Cristei prior to December 22, 2007
- A completed Team Registration (completed online, or via alternative arrangements made ahead of time)
- At least one Regional Meet Judge for every team (first step to registering online)
- At least one Regional Meet Volunteer worker for up to three teams from the same school (done online)
Failure to register by December 21, 2007 may result in penalties to the team, including performing at the end of the schedule, no listing in the program and receiving no official scores. If for some reason one of your coaches cannot make the December 21 deadline, it is possible—but not guaranteed—that we can accommodate a slightly late registration if we know in advance to expect it. Please remind your coaches that it breaks our hearts as much as theirs if we have to penalize teams for failure to register in a timely manner—but scheduling, printing of programs, mailing of the coaches materials for the regional meet, training of judges, and scheduling of volunteers mean this deadline has almost no “extra time” built in. Hence, on-time registration is crucially important.
Our wonderful and creative NOVA East Odyssey of the Mind t-shirts will be sold again this year. This year’s design is very clever—a word acrostic using Odyssey of the Mind terms. Your teams will not want to be left out! The order form for t-shirts is enclosed in this newsletter and must be received by January 10, 2008.
Judges Training will be on Saturday, February 9, 2008, from 8:15 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at Mark Twain Middle School. Judges training is free and also includes breakfast. Judges will be mailed a reminder about one week before the Judges Training; detailed information about assigned problems and judging positions will be provided at the training. Every judge must attend the judges training, regardless of prior judging experience or judging position. Please make sure your judges understand this and that they must be at their judging site for the entire competition.
Please share all of this information with your coaches, make sure all the enclosed forms are distributed to your coaches and all teams register between December 1 and December 21, 2007. Please visit our website (www.novaeastodysseyofthemind.org), and for copies of newsletters and all forms. You will also find useful information at the state and national sites at www.vaodyssey.org and www.odysseyofthemind.com, respectively.
Here’s to a great year of creativity and fun! And Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Christine Hoska
Regional Director
NOVA Odyssey of the Mind East
cmhoska@yahoo.com