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CROTON, N.Y. – More than 75 Croton students will put their imaginations to work Saturday for the annual Destination Imagination Regional Tournament at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry.
The high school, middle school and elementary school students have been hard at work practicing for months preparing for dozens of Destination Imagination challenges that will require them use creative and critical thinking skills to solve a multitude of challenges at the regional tournament. Of the 60 teams competing in this year’s regional tournament 12 of them are from Croton, by far the most from any school district. Winners of this weekend’s tournament will have a chance to move to states and eventually a global tournament held in May at the University of Tennessee.
Rye, Lakeland, Somers, Briarcliff Manor, Yorktown and several other Westchester communities are all sending teams this year. Croton Project Manager Joshua Diamond said the team could become this year’s best.
“I think we have many teams that will go all the way to globals and it could be one of the strongest teams we’ve ever had,” Diamond said. “This is the largest group we’ve had. We have some really great kids and they’ve been working very hard so we’re really excited about the weekend.”
Regional Coordinator Seth Davis agreed.
“The Croton teams do extremely well competitively,” Davis said. “This is largely due to a superbly organized network of parental volunteers.”
The challenges run the gamut of academic subjects including technical engineering, general sciences, and fine arts. Seventh grader Celine Brad, who stars in one of the structural challenges, said she’s very proud of her team and has confidence they could make it to globals this year.
“Putting together all of the requirements into the skit was really challenging,” the 13-year-old said. “But I’m very happy we got everything done and came up with a really funny and great idea.”
Incorporating every element into the challenge was easily one of the best parts for seventh grader Marcus Raskob.
“It was really fun to make our sets and put it all together for our performance,” said Marcus, 12. “It was really cool how we integrated all of the challenges into our actual story and I think it’s going to be really fun to perform.”
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