The Destination Imagination team placed first in the Fine Arts category at the Destination Imagination competition March 5. Clark Cravens, Dylan Rowling, Garrett Smith and Julia Stein will now advance to state April 1-2 in Anna, Texas.

“I thought it went okay,” Smith said. “We didn’t do that great, but we still got first place which was nice.”

Their challenge required them to create a mystery story with a possible three different characters.

“So we decided to go with a game show because we thought it would be a cool mystery out of the ordinary, it wasn’t your typical ‘Who Did It?’ mystery,” Stein said. “So when we decided on doing a game show we did the research when they started to become popular and that was the ’50s.”

The challenge required the team to pick a time period before 1990 and so the group chose they wanted to do a “Who Did it?” mystery. Since they chose a 1950s theme, they decided to make everything in black and white. From the black suit and ties to the gray paint on their faces.

“Our makeup was a mix of face paint, eye shadows, mascaras and stuff that we just kind of blended all over our face to look like we were just wearing regular makeup but on a gray scale,” Stein said.

They will have the chance to qualify for the Global competition at The University of Tennessee in May.

“It’s always fun, it’s always high energy and like everyone is pumped to be there,” Stein said. “This year was a little more stressful because we didn’t know how it was going to end until we were physically on stage.”