The Destination Imagination team will compete at the Global Finals May 21-24 in Knoxville, Tennessee. The DI team has made it to Globals several years in a row, but this is a brand new team that has advanced to the international competition for DI.

“I’m very excited about our freshman team going to Globals this year. It’s a great opportunity and a big honor,” director Marguerite Swilling said. “I think they have a great chance at placing in Globals because they worked hard for it.”

The four students compete in the Laugh Art Loud division and created a skit that has a comic book theme, with superheroes, a villain and a stolen painting. The group created all of their costumes and their backdrop which includes blinds with painted background scenes that can be flipped to show a different scene.

At regionals Feb. 22, which was hosted on the school’s campus, the group placed second and was later awarded a wild card slot at state. The group used the time before state to practice and perfect their performance about a comic book villain that ventures out of the comic strip.

“They worked really hard,” Swilling said. “After the first competition, they went back to the drawing board and corrected everything the judges said. They took it all to heart.”

The DI team, which includes freshmen Dylan Rowling, Julia Stein and Garrett Smith and eighth grader Clark Cravens, took fourth at state, April 12. The group will continue to practice and tweak their performance in preparation for Global Finals this month.

“I’m pretty excited for this,” Rowling said. “We’ve been together for four years now. It’s been a series of trial and error and it finally paid off.”