Students win big at Imagination tourney

They put their brains to work and came out on top.

South Whidbey students participated in the regional Destination Imagination tournament on March 6 in Lake Stevens.

Destination Imagination is a nonprofit global organization that provides students the opportunity to learn creativity, teamwork and problem-solving by working out solutions for predetermined challenges. Challenge categories range from scientific and technical, to theater arts and improvisation. Each challenge is developed to connect to educational standards and pushes student teams to look at the ordinary in extraordinary ways.

This year, four teams from South Whidbey Elementary and one team from Langley Middle School competed against 45 teams at the regional tournament at Lake Stevens High School.

Two teams won first place in their challenges — the South Whidbey Elementary School team and the Langley Middle School team — and will advance to the state competition in East Wenatchee on March 27. They include elementary school students Bailey Forsyth, Kai Fletcher, Emily Turpin, Maxfield Friedman, Megan Drake, Sean Drake, and Cory Ackerman; and the middle school students Kohl Hunter, Jacob Nelson, John Gibson, Hank Papritz and Jake Papritz.

The other three teams from South Whidbey placed second, third and fourth in their respective challenges.

In addition, the middle school team won a Renaissance Award for outstanding design, engineering and performance, and one elementary school team won a DaVinci Award for outstanding creativity.

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