A team of SLV Middle School students and another from Boulder Creek Elementary School will be competing in the state tournament of Destination ImagiNation or DI, a national program that challenges kids’ creativity, imagination, problem-solving skills and teamwork.

The middle schoolers’ “Who the What Now” team of seventh-graders qualified by coming in second place in a regional tournament in San Jose on March 8. The BCE fourth- and fifth-graders’ “Brilliant Brains” team was third to make it to state. Two other local elementary teams competed.

In Destination ImagiNation, teams build their skills during the year by taking on a challenge over several weeks. Members work together to apply their talents.

At a competition, there’s an “instant challenge” in which the team gets a challenge and the materials needed to solve it, then have only a few minutes to produce a solution.

In the San Jose competition, for example, the middle school team pulled a “DI’ve Got a Secret” Challenge. Members had to write a skit about a secret, create a masquerade character disclosed in the skit, invent an optical illusion and create three pieces of scenery to help reveal the secret.

Everything is done by the students with no help from adults, whose job is to be hands-off during competition.

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