Thanks to Carol Twilley, GHS student, for this fabulous article.

Saturday April 13th, the Greenville Destination Imagination Program sent eight of their best teams to compete at the state tournament in Katy, Texas.

Destination Imagination’s goal of teaching kids of all ages to independently solve any given problem creatively by using skills from science, technology, mathematics, the arts, and service learning was fully evident.  DI teaches the creative process form imagination to innovation.  Using optimism and teamwork, Greenville teams competed in four of the seven challenges available: Fine Arts, Structure, Technical, and Scientific.

In Disguise was the name of the Fine Arts challenge this year.  With the right camouflage, you can become anyone or anything.  Who will you be when you take the mask away?  The teams must create a non-verbal story about a character that uses a disguise and enhances the story with a decorative and morphing mask.

The high school Fine Arts team, led by Pud Kearns, Mo Twilley and David Long, created a whole new world underneath a little girl’s bed where she had to defeat and then befriend the monster underneath with the help of her doll come-to-live.  Placing 1st at both the regional and state competition, and achieving a Renaissance award for their rising bed and one of their spectacular masks, this State Championship team is now preparing to show the world at the Global competition in Knoxville, Tennessee.

The elementary Fine Arts team, led by Emily Duke, took a different path for their skit.  In it, a boy is transformed into a dragon and found by his sisters.  The parents were absolutely amazed by how the team came together after a member, Sarah Whitson, broke her leg two weeks before the state tournament.  This was the team’s first year participating in DI, placing 11th at the state level.

The Scientific Challenge was called Wind Visible.   Art can begin with a flick of a wrist, but can it ride on the wind?  Teams must explore how the science of wind energy can be used to make kinetic art move.

 The high school Scientific team, led by Sharen Ozarowoski, created an expanding peacock feather tail and incorporated it into their skit as part of an anti-virus.  The anti-virus was needed because their team-built computer had downloaded a silent virus into the cooling system.  The team had to resolve their problem in order to allow their screen-saver, Fan Gogh, to activate.  This amazing team placed 6th at state.

In the Zone: Your vehicles are cranked and ready to tell their story.  Will you push it, play it safe, or take a big risk?  Team members must build 3-10 small vehicles that are able to reliably and accurately travel specific distances.

Bonnie Stewart’s high school Tech team based their skit off of a school of superheroes and one mechanic to find and save Broom from the villain MoBro.  Throughout the competition this team overcame large obstacles and received 12th place.

The middle school Tech team was led by Libby Stromberg.  They decided to have their skit be about crossing dangerous areas and characters to get Grandma some food while she was sick.  Their favorite memories were when they had snack time and while they were building their sets.  They placed 10th.

The Structure challenge:  Twist-O-Rama-Let’s do the twist! It goes like this:  Build a structure that can survive a serious hit while holding as much weight as it can.  That’s what we are torqueing about!

Catherine Cantrell and Jackie Abbott’s high school structure team, The Architects of Time, made an entire clock world where Father Time was manipulated into ruining his daughter’s love life by none-other than the daughter’s best friend.  While making the skit, the team had fun manufacturing code words for everything and named their structures some of the funniest names they could come up with.  This team will be going to the Global Finals after achieving 4th place.

Angela Hudgins and Jackie Dawson coached the high school’s other structure team. Their skit played off of the classic board game, Candyland.  The Queen of Frosting tries to trick her candyland people into thinking that she and her brother, Lord Licorice, are not trying to take over Candyland and capture King Candy, but she is sold out in the end.  They placed 5th in the competition.

Rich Ryan and Bill Mayberry lead the middle school structure team to their sixth place position with a skit about connected puzzle pieces that split ways with each other and find a way to reconnect as a better masterpiece.  Odie Odeneal became his own masterpiece when he accidentally sat in a pile of super glue one practice.  After only one year of everyone being involved on the team, they achieved 6th place.

Another important part of Destination Imagination is the Instant Challenge.  This portion is a fourth of the points a team will earn at competition.  Each team has a different way of going about solving IC's, ranging from just winging it, to specific roles given to each team member.  The IC can be technical (where the team will build a tower, a bridge, or something of that nature), a performance IC (where the team performs a skit on a certain subject), a hybrid IC (this combines technical and performance in some way), and the newest category of ICs, logic (where a team is tested in their knowledge of different subject matters).

Overall, Emily Duke easily explained this weekend simply as, “8 teams, 54 kids, 5 schools, one AMAZING trip to state.  Teams were given their challenges in September and started using their imagination to explore new unique ideas for a solution.  Since January, teams have been meeting at least 3 days a week.  These kids understand commitment.  I am so proud of the hard work all of these teams have put in to their solutions.”