Contact: Tammy Lane • First Posted: Thursday, March 26, 2009

Eleven teams with more than 70 students from Fayette County schools competed in the Destination ImagiNation state tournament March 21 in Louisville, and three brought home top honors.

One of SCAPA Bluegrass’ teams earned a first-place trophy in the structure challenge as well as a prestigious Spirit of Destination ImagiNation Award, for acting as a superior role model in the areas of spirit, sportsmanship and volunteerism.

“The ‘Ice Melting’ team built a two-part structure weighing 25 grams that held 80 pounds! They incorporated this feat of strength into a dramatic skit about an art collector looking for the perfect new piece for her collection,” explained Harold Putman, the team manager.

Athens-Chilesburg Elementary, whose teams competed in the vehicle and the drama challenges, picked up a second-place trophy and a pair of third-place finishes.

Rosa Parks Elementary placed third in the structure challenge. In addition, one of the school’s K-2 teams received the Renaissance Award for engineering skill and the DaVinci Award for outstanding creativity.

Destination ImagiNation is a problem-solving program that helps young people learn how to work and grow as a team and nurture mutual self-respect while enhancing their own self-confidence and skills.

“We have found that through this program, students are really thinking through challenges and using their skills to figure out solutions to practical, real-life problems,” said Jodi Dodd, a teacher at Athens-Chilesburg Elementary School. “You can see the ‘light turn on’ when they understand that there are many ways to solve a problem—and that there is no ‘right’ answer. Sometimes changing perspective helps a team grow!  The students are building confidence knowing they have a team to stand with them.  In addition, we are seeing students take their classroom knowledge and put it to use outside the classroom.”

This is a new program to Fayette County, but it has been slowly growing each year. While DI has competitions from kindergarten through college, most FCPS teams are elementary school level. For more information, contact Jodi Dodd at  jodidodd@gmail.com or visit Destination ImagiNation of Kentucky.

At the recent DI state tournament, performances ran the gamut in creativity with themes ranging from ancient Egypt, to little people living in another dimension, to robots walking around in a Japanese shopping mall!

Each of the challenges offered a different focus, such as mathematics, technical design and construction, experimentation, theater arts, social studies, research, story development, architecture, geography, structural engineering and other disciplines that require critical-thinking skills.

Top results from the state tournament

SCAPA Bluegrass:

1^st place, Challenge E, A New Angle, and Spirit of DI Award: Ice Melting – James Carter, Carson Crovo, Stephanie Stumbur, Ally Poage and Monica Schmocker,

Athens-Chilesburg Elementary:

2^nd  place, Challenge A, Operation Cooperation: The Outbursters – Rebecca Adkins, Meredith Barton, Hannah Adkins,  Jade Curless, Maddie Covey and Ethan Burdette.

3^rd place, Challenge A, Operation Cooperation: Successful Geek Squad – Liz Booth, Austin Booth, Nicholas Joseph, Suzanne Seivers, Colin Glenn, Christopher Caprio and Rachel Gilbert.

3^rd place, Challenge B, Instinct Messaging: Potential Pigs – Dawn Burdette, Lauren Walker, Sydney Burdette and Justin Hazelwood.

Rosa Parks Elementary:

3^rd place, Challenge E, A New Angle: I. DI. Peeps, Rosa Parks Elementary – Kelly Telech, Shea Hausman, Eli  Dodd, Zachary Craft, William Klement, Adam Telechbush and Stephanie Yang.

DaVinci and Renaissance awards: Green Army Unit – Alex Klement, Andrew Blakemore, Brendan Nash, Graeme Marshall, Isaac Dodd, McKenna Walker and Gabrielle Counts.