Wicomico Destination Imagination (DI) teams once again excelled at the Maryland State Destination Imagination Tournament at University of Maryland Baltimore County on March 16, with three Wicomico County DI teams qualifying to advance to Global Finals in Kansas City, Mo. in late May.
Four DI teams from Wicomico County Public Schools competed against more than 200 teams from across the state. Three of the teams from Wicomico Schools qualified to compete at the highest level of DI competition, Global Finals, and two of those teams – the Westside Intermediate Backstreet Girls and the Parkside High Phantabulous Phantoms (with team members from three schools) – have taken on the ultimate challenge of preparing both their challenges and their funding to make the trip to Global Finals.
Westside Intermediate School Backstreet Girls (3rd Place in state competition)
Team members: Audrey Salmon, Allison Dickson, Layla Feather, Calista Sweeney, Ansley Guy, Alexis Reddish
Team Managers: Tammy Adams and Tim Dickson
Parkside High School Phantabulous Phantoms (3rd Place in state competition)
Team Members: River Taylor Davidson (Bennett Middle), Apeksha Agarwal (Parkside High), Liam Wolff (Salisbury Middle)
Team Manager: Beth Wolff
Congratulations to the third Wicomico team, which qualified for Globals but opted to finish its season with the state competition:
Westside Intermediate School Mustang Potato (2nd Place in state competition)
Team Members: Luke DeLizza, Aamani Jones, Allen Merritt, Israyah Walker, Cameron Doukas, Avery Krauss, Charles Deckenback
Team Manager: Theresa DeLizza
Destination Imagination (DI) is an educational nonprofit on a mission to inspire young people to imagine and innovate today so they can become the creative and collaborative leaders of tomorrow. The world needs a generation of innovators in order to solve our biggest challenges. It requires individuals to be unafraid to push limits, change systems, work together, and forge new paths. Destination Imagination equips participants with the skills necessary to tackle the future head-on.
The DI Challenge Experience program is a team-based, creative project competition. Teams of students from Prekindergarten through university learn to use the creative process to solve one of seven annual Challenges. Destination Imagination transcends race, gender, and ethnic boundaries to encourage cooperation and productive problem solving in all children. DI is not so much a program as a process.
Competing at Global Finals is a tremendous honor and achievement. It also costs quite a bit of money, so the two Global Finals-bound teams will be busy fundraising for the next few weeks. For more information on the Destination Imagination Global Finals teams, please contact Parkside Team Manager Beth Wolf (bwolff@wcboe.org) or Westside Intermediate team managers Tammy Adams (tadams@wcboe.org) or Tim Dickson (tdickson@wcboe.org).
One fundraiser is coming up on May 4 and 5, when Barnes & Noble will host a Bookfair to benefit the DI teams. Flyer: https://webapi3.wicomicoschools.org/storage/flyer/files/OGpHRJACvtCzGHityQbQWhGKUIZOTl8TDWxjcCCa.pdf