Destination Imagination team heads to state

By Mia Drake

From creating scripts and making plays, to building sets and acting out scenarios, El Dorado students in Destination Imagination create some of the coolest projects out of limited supplies. One team, including seniors Brianna Romero, Jozlyn Gasca, Miriam Meneses, Flor Rodriguez and Miguel Montes, placed first in the Engineering Challenge this past weekend in the Destination Imagination regional contest.

“Basically, we had to create a play, and build a structure out of certain materials,” Rodriguez said. “It had to weigh the least amount possible, but hold the maximum capacity.”

That doesn’t sound like an easy task, but the students in DI practice and prepare for these kinds of challenges. The team will now advance to state and get the chance to compete with larger schools.

“For our challenge, we already had the prompt – so we knew what we would make the play revolve around,” Rodriguez said. “Once we finished, we went in front of the judges and laid it all out for them. They ended up really liking it.”

According to the website, Destination Imagination is a volunteer-led, educational, non-profit organization that teaches 21st century skills and STEM principles to kindergarten through university level students through creative and collaborative problem-solving challenges.

“Most people don’t know what we do exactly,” Rodriguez said. “I don’t blame them. It’s a lot easier said than done. It takes up a lot of time, but the end project is something amazing.”

Another team that competed in the Regional Tournament and placed in the categories included freshmen Trinity Erales, Melody Medina, Nireyda Rodriguez and Daniel Alaniz. They won second place in the Fine Arts Challenge.