Blair's Destination Imagination team places 25th in national competition

One of the Blair Destination ImagiNation (DI) teams placed 25 out of 40 at the DI Global competition held at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville this past weekend, from Wednesday, May 24 through Sunday, May 29. The team competed against approximately 60 other teams in the same age range. According to team member Lynn Abe, there were many ties, resulting in only 40 spots rather than 60. No other Blair team made it to Globals.

DI requires teams to formulate creative solutions to problems and then create a skit demonstrating their solution, which is graded by judges. The Blair team, for example, competed in the Sudden SerenDIpity competition, which required the team to build a device that would change into something else part way though the skit, and would actually work in one of its forms. The Blair team's skit revolved around whether or not the device, an antibody catapult that later changed into a cell splitter, should be used or not.

According to Abe, the competition was a lot of fun, but more stressful than usual, because one of the members of the seven-woman team had to stay home at the last minute. "We had to rewrite the script the day before [the competition] and give all of the lines to someone else, and we had to write a completely new end," Abe said.

The team spent a lot of time watching other teams from around the world perform in their time off, according to Abe. "We made friends with other teams and then went and watched them perform. In one of the challenges, DIzzy Derby, they had to build a car that would carry one of their team members, and that one was really cool to watch. There was also lots of other random stuff to do, like going to the pool, taking the busses into Knoxville to wander and one day there was a moon bounce," Abe says.

Abe said that this year was a particularly good one for team building. "This year Globals was really good because we hung out together and hung out as a team. On the last night, instead of sleeping in two separate rooms like we had, we all put the mattresses on the floor and slept together and bonded. It was really great," Abe noted.