Destination Imagination Team from Kensington Set for State Tournament

A quartet of third graders from Kensington Intermediate School (KIS) traveled to the Ohio Destination Imagination (DI) State Tournament on Saturday (March 30) at the Beaver Local School District in East Liverpool, Ohio.

Team Destination Imagination People (DIP) – which consists of third graders Jason Fan, Abe Gould, Alexi Kostakis and Aiden Situ – qualified for the state tournament after placing first in the Monster Effects Engineering Challenge among the teams in Grades 3-5 at the Ohio Region 16 DI Tournament on March 2 at Beachwood HS.

Kostakis’ mother, Eleni, serves as the team manager, while Meredith Muccio, the Gifted Coordinator at KIS, is the advisor for Destination Imagination.

The four students agreed that they didn’t have their best performance of the season at regionals and were not expecting to win. Instead, they were both shocked and excited when Team DIP was announced as the winner.

“We were so excited when we found out that we won that we started jumping around,” Gould said.

In the Monster Effects Challenge, teams must design and build a freestanding structure that is placed on the structure tester to see how much weight it can hold without failing.

“We can only use certain materials to build it,” Alexi Kostakis said. “It has to be taller than 7.5 inches but can’t taller than nine inches.”

Materials that can be used include aluminum foil, cork, duct tape, electrical tape, flexible plastic tubing, glue, latex-free balloons, latex-free rubber bands, monofilament fishing line, paper, wire and wood. Appraisers inspect the materials during the check-in and once again after the presentation to ensure all specifications and requirements are met.

During events, teams must create and present a story in which the sudden appearance of a Monster has surprising results and integrate the Structure Testing into the story. A special effect that uses Technical Methods to enhance the sudden appearance of the Monster or the events surrounding the Monster in the story must also be designed and created.

The total weight of the structure must not exceed 175 grams, which is the equivalent of 0.385809 pounds.

Team DIP met once per week starting in October to begin planning and designing their structure. They estimated that it took roughly five weeks to build the final structure which held 300 pounds at regionals.

With a trip to the state tournament on the horizon, the team decided to build another structure, using what they learned throughout the season to build something even more durable.

They will put it to the test on Saturday at the state tournament.

“We keep it in a box with bubble wrap and put it in another box when we move it around to keep it protected,” Situ said.

All four students are in their first season of competing in Destination Imagination and have enjoyed their time together using math, science and engineering skills for the competition.

“We didn’t really know each other before this and have become friends,” Fan said.