‘Destination ImagiNation’ Teams

Randolph's middle school Destination ImagiNation team shows its spirit. In back are, from left, Annie Hutchinson and John Skoda. Front row, Sarah Roger, Doug Reymore, and Thornton Raskevitz. (Provided)

Do Well at Global Finals in Tenn.

By Courtney Bonoyer

Building teamwork, learning to be quick on your feet, letting your imagination soar—these are a few things with which Destination ImagiNation helps children of all ages.

Earlier this month, two Randolph teams went to the global finals in Knoxville, Tenn. to compete with other teams from all over the world.

The middle school team, led by Mary Raskevitz, achieved third place, the highest a Vermont team has ever gotten. In that team were Thornton Raskevitz, Doug Reymore, John Skoda, Sarah Roger, Annie Hutchinson and Gwendolyn Pelletier.

The elementary school team led by Marina Aronson, including Sasha Aronson, Haddie Lary, Geoffrey Doering, Adam Palazzo, Carly Rotter and Sophia Dwinell, achieved 42^nd place.

How Destination ImagiNation works is that each team picks the challenge they want to work on and they have four to five months to complete their project. They do an eight-minute presentation about the challenge in the form of a play or skit. When they get to the competition, each team also does an instant challenge where they have five minutes to solve a challenge in front of the judges.

For the middle school team’s instant challenge (which they won) they had to build a boat that was able to cross a tank of water.

The middle school group’s challenge was to test a myth from a foreign country and prove it true or false. They chose the myth of Poland’s white eagle. In the myth there are three brothers, Lech, Czech and Rus, who decide to go their own ways to establish their homes. Lech comes to a field and sees an eagle fly into a nest and when it spreads its wings, the light hits it and the wings appeared to be tipped with gold. The team had to prove whether or not the eagle’s wings could indeed be tipped with gold and, in the end, they felt it was plausible.

The teams had no help from adults or other teams while completing their challenges. Raskevitz says she is "really proud of the kids and they all had a really great time."

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