As they sat observing the big stadium around them, juniors Grace Cabuena, Katie Kelton and Madison Cook were astonished by the amount of people attending the Destination Imagination Global Finals convention. Over 16,000 people were present, coming from all across the globe.

Knoxville, Tennessee was just a few hours away for Cabuena, Kelton and Cook, but it was a long flight for the people attending from other countries.

When the parade for each country started, the girls saw Japan, China, England, Russia and many other countries in the procession. Each country was represented by a group of competitors wearing cultural clothing and others were creative with their costumes, such as creating duct tape outfits in their countries colors. For the U.S., 45 states were represente

d at the competition, and the girls were proud to be there representing Texas in their challenges.

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Destination Imagination, DI, is a creativity-based competition that offers challenges to different groups. The categories include fine arts, service learning and STEM, areas focusing on science, technology, engineering and math. Each group has a team of three or more people that work together in competitions.

“It’s basically learning about how to work in a team and to get to solutions without going the way that’s the most obvious,” Cabuena said.

Kelton has been in DI since she was in second grade, Cabuena has been in it since third grade and Cook since she was in seventh. When competing, the girls use their long-term friendship to help them in their competitions. From elementary to high school, these girls have spent hours every week to prepare for their competitions. After years of working together, they have learned to build off of each other and use that to help them advance in their competitions.

“We’re basically just a close knit family at this point,” Cook said. “We know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. We can pull on each other’s talent to create the best thing possible.”

Their Team Manager, Terri Guthrie, started the team about 10 years ago when she moved to Texas. Cabuena joined the team when her mom found about about DI and thought it would be good for her to join. Kelton joined after she moved to Texas from Florida and wanted to find a good activity to help her find friends. Cook became a part of the team when Cabuena encouraged her to join.

“I love working with kids and being involved in a program that teaches and enriches kids, so it was a natural fit for me,” Guthrie said. “It is a program I am still excited and enthusiastic about after all these years.”

To prepare for the competitions, the girls meet almost every Sunday to practice together with the team. Guthrie holds these meets to help the girls get prepared for whatever their next contest may be.

“Most of our meeting time is spent with the team on their feet acting and creating props, and discussing and evaluating solutions,” Guthrie said. “Our meetings are active and very loud affairs.”

During these meetings, the team will rehearse improv situations that could possibly be given to them during the competition. They practice incorporating random elements into each scene and how to add it to the improvisation. They also practice their instant challenges by doing two minute skits to help get them warmed up for their competition.

The girls, along with two other LISD students, compete in improv competitions.

In February, they competed at the regional competition. They were in a improvisation, called Close Encounters, where they had to act out a four minute skit, with only two minutes to p

lan. Having done so many practices before this, the girls felt prepared but also nervous, which comes with being in a timed competition.

The girls’ scenario was an Antarctic research station and they had to deal with the situation given to them. Each team competing in the competition had a different scenario and the girls’ situation was dealing with an endless swarm of bugs. To resolve the scenario the girls worked elements such as angels and an explosion into the scene to help them place first in their division.

Every year since third grade, the girls have placed first in the regional competition, and placed in the top three in state, which allowed them to go to the global competition in Tennessee.
“It’s really fun interacting with people from different cultures and seeing how they take on the same challenge as us and seeing how they can respond,” Kelton said.

Even though they’ve been given the opportunity to go to Globals Finals every year, they were only able to go during middle school due to the lack of funding in high school. The girls plan to go once again during their senior year as a senior graduation from DI.

Along with meeting people from different countries at nationals, there is also pin trading between the groups. Some pins are rare and the groups can swap pins to collect rare ones.

“You get to see everyone’s new ideas and then fight for the rare ones that haven’t been seen in awhile,” Cook said.

The girls have collected hundreds of pins from the three years they’ve been to the Global Finals. They also receive their own pins when they go to the regional competitions to start their trading. Over the years pins have been Cinderella themed, all of the Disney princesses, Winnie the Pooh themed and more.

“I have a towel of them,” Cabuena said. “It’s not the most efficient way to carry them but there’s a lot of them. It’s what I’m stuck with.”

In addition to collecting pins, the girls have created duct tape dresses to express their creativity. It started from sandals in elementary school, and led up to duct tape dresses of the Disney princesses for Globals. Although these dresses weren’t made for the competitions, the girls enjoyed walking around in these dresses during their free day at the convention.

Destination Imagination has allowed these girls to receive benefits that will help them in the long run. In their senior year, they can apply for scholarships of $1000 by writing an essay that centers around the creativeness theme of DI. Although it ends after high school, the benefit from DI continues on after they’ve graduated.

“It teaches so many skills that’s just teamwork,” Kelton said. “Working with other people in high stress environments and also just communication skills.”

The girls have enjoyed their experiences of growing together.

“The Destination Imagination community is a fun, high energy, crazy group of people who love to work together, grow together and have fun while learning.” Guthrie said.