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Without the support of their school and community, Sacred Heart would not have been able to make it to the Odyssey of the Mind world finals.

Sacred Heart, a private school from Des Moines, worked its way to the top with hard work and cooperation from everyone in the school’s community, parents said.

“The school got us here,” said Steph Herold, parent of team member Sam Herold.

“It was a community effort to get them here,” she said. “When we went to pull the kids out of class on Wednesday afternoon, the other kids in the class were cheering them on. The school helped us with a lot of fundraising efforts. People brought in their cans for us, helped us sell flowers and did a lot of bake sales with us.”

The Sacred Heart team was composed of four third-grade boys and three fifth-grade girls. Matt Manzer, Joseph Nelton, Sam Herold and Michael Bernard are in third grade. Elizabeth McCauley, Carlee Konz and Madison Fox are in fifth grade.

“The most exciting thing about being here is getting to meet people from other countries, pin trading and competition,” McCauley said.

The team came from Des Moines without their coach Kirsten McCauley. McCauley is a full-time teacher at Roosevelt High School in Des Moines and had finals last week.

She wasn’t with them until they had competition on Friday and traveled between Des Moines and Ames the rest of the weekend.

“Without the parents’ help and the school’s support, I wouldn’t have been able to do this,” McCauley said. “With finals being this week at the high school there was no way I could have gotten it off, so the parents got to be my assistants.”

On Friday, the team tackled their first competition — Division 1 of Put A Spin On It in Scheman Auditorium. The team created and performed an original piece of work about human achievement, chosen from a given list. The team chose to do the Great Wall of China and why it was built.

In this competition, the team was required to show a scene representing the original reason why it was built, find a more acceptable reason for why it was built and have a model of the creation of work.

The team’s model was made out of cardboard that was painted brown to resemble the wall in real life.

In their skit, the team told the audience the wall was built to protect China from its invading neighbors. Then they went through a series of questions asking why else the wall could have been built. Finally they came upon the real reason — it was the longest runway for models ever built.

“Where else could models model on the world’s longest runway but the Great Wall of China?” Carlee Konz asked.

The team’s presentation was ten to fifteen minutes long and received loud applause at the end of the performance.

After the team was done competing, the judges came down from their seats to talk to the kids about their skit and where they got the idea.

Outside of the performance area, their coach told the kids how proud she was of their performance.

“I think you did great,” McCauley said. “Now all we have to do is wait and see how you placed, but no matter where you placed, you guys still did a good job.”

McCauley waited a half an hour to see the results. An hour after the team competed she was back in Des Moines, taking her youngest daughter to a dance recital.

“This week has been hectic,” she said. “But it’s been for a good reason and a good experience. They sold 2,750 candy bars to get here, so they should be happy just to be having fun here.”

Overall, Sacred Heart placed 34th out of 54 participants in Division 1.

“I think they did fabulous,” said Kellie Manzer, parent of Matt Manzer.