March Success for the Miamisburg Destination Imagination Team

Destination Imagination is a non-profit organization that allows children from elementary-secondary to compete in a multitude of challenges. Whether it is Scientific, Fine Arts, Service Learning, Technical, Engineering or Improvisational, teams find joy in participating. This year the Miamisburg Destination Imagination Team consists of five members and competed at the secondary level with three challenges. As a team, they chose to compete in the Technical Challenge - On Target, Service Learning Challenge - Escape Artists, and Improvisational Challenge - Heads Up.

The Technical Challenge - On Target is a challenge where the team had to create a story that integrated the use of an aircraft. In the requirements, the aircraft must be capable of delivering five payloads and must be integrated into a story/skit the team creates. For this challenge, team member Jacob Riffel created a drone to fulfill the aircraft requirement. For the story aspect of the challenge, the team conveyed a story that brought a futuristic perspective on VR and drone technology. Through brainstorming and creativity, the team created a story about how the heart saves a technology-clouded brain from acting as a machine with the help of an electromagnetic impulse. In the story, the heart almost dies as a result of the brain acting like a machine. So, as a last resort, the heart sent the electromagnetic impulse to the brain to explore different parts of the brain, thus awakening it from it’s machine-state. In addition, the electromagnetic impulse mirrors the drone’s movements throughout the skit.

In the Service Learning Challenge - Escape Artists the team was challenged to create a story that used three clues to escape an issue of their choice while integrating a service project related to the issue. For this challenge, the team created a service project that focused on spreading awareness on three types of addiction; drugs, alcohol and gaming in an attempt to help others escape from their addictions. Their most successful project was their IC I CAN event where they had younger DI teams walk through an escape room to learn about the dangers of peer pressure and facts about the three types of addiction the team focused on. In addition, the team created Instant Challenges for them to practice. As for the story, they created a multitude of props to help them convey how to escape addiction with clues from the IC I CAN event escape room.

As for the team’s Improvisational Challenge - Heads Up, they were challenged in many to create a process to help them plan and perform an improvisational performance. In the performance, they were expected to portray a flip, convey comedy and tragedy, and the coin characters while incorporating the tale. In addition, a coin determines researched a list of coin characters. For each coin character, they found comedic and tragic facts about the character to help them convey the story in each part. In addition, after the flip is portrayed they immediately go into part two of the performance, which, is non-verbal. Since it turns into a non-verbal performance the team used creative acting techniques such as sound and expression to help the audience understand what was happening. At the team’s Ohio Region 12 DI Competition they faced some difficulty during the day but were still able to find great success. During their Technical Challenge, their drone failed to deliver their third and fourth payload. However, during the performance, their team member Jacob Riffel managed to fix the problem payload. For his persistence to solve the problem with the drone, he was awarded an Individual Renaissance Award. Through creative solutions in their instant and central challenges, they managed to find great success by managing to get first place in all three challenges.

In Region 12, Destination Imagination likes to give seniors the opportunity to feel recognized for their accomplishments. At the beginning of the awards ceremony, all seniors from every school in the Region 12 area were called up to receive a certificate of participation as well as dog tags. But, that wasn’t all. DI Region 12 is known for their main scholarship opportunity, however, Teri & Bill Skudlarek decided to create another scholarship for students since they are retiring from DI this year. On Miamisburg DI Team, there are currently two seniors with one senior that competed on another team. Although there were many seniors in total, both of the scholarships were awarded to students on the Miamisburg DI Team. For the DI Region 12 Scholarship, Jacob Riffel was the recipient. At the ceremony, he read part of his essay that explained how DI has influenced him to reach his career goals and use creativity to create solutions to many challenges. Then, for the Skudlarek Family Scholarship, it was awarded to Madison Shackleford, despite only being involved in DI for one year. She also read part of her essay that touched on how DI has taught her to use creativity and imagination to solve problems throughout life. With all of the Region 12 Competition success that the team had, it is no wonder that they advanced to the Ohio Destination Imagination State Competition in at Beaver Local Schools.

After a long drive on March 29th, the team arrived in East Liverpool, OH. Throughout the night, they prepared for the next day by rehearsing and creating hats for the State Competition’s scholarship. Thankfully, the team managed to get lots of rest and were still able to be at their best the next morning. In the early morning of March 30th, 2019, the team arrived at the Ohio DI State Competition site, set up their props and prepared for competition. For the rest of the day, however, there were many obstacles the team faced. In their first performance of the day, the tight performance space posed a slight issue, then, as they were checking in for their Instant Challenge later in the day, the fire alarms went off,causing everyone to evacuate the building and delay Instant Challenge times. Despite the logistical nightmare of trying to reconnect team members with their managers, they still were able to succeed. At the awards ceremony, the Miamisburg DI Team managed to get first place in On Target, second place in Project Outreach and fourth place in Heads up. Which, qualified them to move onto Global Finals in Kansas City, MO with all three challenges.

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