Schools

Inver Grove Heights Destination ImagiNation Teams Headed to International Competition

Four teams of Inver Grove students plan to compete against students from Germany, Poland and other nations in Knoxville, Tenn. on May 25-28

When Lauryn Schneider’s Destination ImagiNation coach told her over the phone that her team was invited to go to the Global Finals competition in Knoxville at the end of May, the fifth-grader was “speechless.”

“My coach thought that I had fainted,” said Schneider, laughing.

Schneider and a handful of other Destination ImagiNation (DI) participants gathered on Wednesday afternoon in the yard of Inver Grove Heights resident Paul Coffey, who serves as a Destination ImagiNation team coach.

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This year, a record number of DI teams from Inver Grove Heights qualified for the Global Finals competition — a contest that pits successful DI teams against teams from Germany, China and Poland, among other nations. Of the nine DI teams active in Inver Grove Heights, four plan to travel to Knoxville, Tenn. from May 25-28 to compete against more than 1,000 other teams from around the world.

The qualifying teams include two teams from Simley High School, one team from the Inver Grove Heights Middle School and one team with members from Salem Hills and Hilltop Elementary Schools.

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Only one team has qualified each year over the last five years for Global Finals; to have four qualifying groups this year is a significant accomplishment for the program, Coffey said.

“This year the teams have surpassed all our expectations,” Coffey said. “They are learning to work together and taking on challenges outside of their normal comfort zones.”

SELF-DIRECTION

All four teams began their seasons last fall, when they met and chose which “challenge” they would complete. The challenges — problems the students must successfully solve during each DI competition — are divided into different categories, including “Technical/Mechanical Design”, “Improvisation” and “Theater, Literature and Fine Arts”.

Simley ninth-grader Shelby Coffey’s team chose the Technical/Mechanical Design challenge, and was tasked with building a machine that could lift objects onto and off of a 10-foot-tall tower. The team tested their contraption at the regional competition on March 5 and the state competition on April 16.

“You try a lot of things to see if they’ll work or fail,” said Shelby, Paul Coffey’s daughter. The team, she said, experimented with a handful of different designs to solve the challenge before settling on a slender crane made of PVC pipe.

The do-it-yourself nature of DI teaches students to think independently, Coffey said.

“As a team manager I am trying to help students gain confidence in themselves,” Coffey said. True success, he added, involves learning new skills, being able to solve problems and understanding that failures can lead to positive solutions.

“If they fail, it’s not failure, it’s learning,” Coffey said.

FUNDRAISING

The price tag to attend Global Finals is not cheap: Each student and team manager must pay $610 to attend, not including the transportation costs to Knoxville.

To raise enough money for the teams, the Inver Grove Heights Booster Club is planning several fundraisers, Coffey’s wife Angie said. This last weekend the club participated in a citywide garage sale at Veterans Memorial Community Center. This coming weekend, the boosters are holding a bowling fundraiser at Drkulas.

Angie hopes the success of the teams this year will help raise the profile of the program in the community.

“For Inver Grove it is a huge accomplishment,” Angie said. “Not everyone knows what [Destination ImagiNation] is, and I’m sure that there are teachers in the district that don’t even know what it is.”

Correction: The article above has been changed to correct an error. The Destination ImagiNation teams will compete at an international competition in Knoxville, Tenn.


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