Mercer Island teams virtually dominated the Destination Imagination (DI) tournament, as all 13 teams qualified for the state tournament later in March.
DI is an educational program in which student teams solve a variety of open-ended challenges and present their solutions at tournaments, which are virtual this year.
“By working remotely, our students connected on screen and pulled together remarkable presentations and solutions to their challenges. The amount of teamwork that went into solving the solutions, while physically apart from one another, is commendable,” said West Mercer Elementary teacher Julie Langley, who led several teams along with fellow West Mercer teacher David Baxter.
Secondary Level:
*Hark Medlee (Engineering Challenge) First place and DaVinci Award
Team members: Jake Chansky, Kevin Wang, Landon Schmidt-Warnecke, Sam Frohlich, Renee White, Wesley Ho and Justin Lesko; team manager: David Baxter.
DaVinci Award description: Not only did this team meet the required challenge of every team member being in a separate video window/separate room, but they also used it to enhance the presentation solution. They achieved this without special editing or video effects. They took the challenge of video instant challenge and made it work to their advantage.
* 7-bit (Technical Challenge) First place and Renaissance Award
Team members: Sidh Shroff, Eliot Geer, Daniel Marcus, Julius Perez, Lucas Lessard, Tyler Langley and Sol Park; team manager: David Baxter.
Renaissance Award description: Used 3-D CAD and 3-D printing to form actuator “finger” mechanisms that plucked different notes on a ukulele. Built pad printer made from hand-made solenoids, ink pads, and micro-controller to print key clues for solving crime. Novel video editing of green screen stitched team members at remote locations together via layering, making it appear they were all together. Pixel art background made to look like classic ’80s video game and background music was similar in character.
* Mystery High (Technical Challenge) Second place
Team members: Bobby Selden, Gareth Tatum, Ben Viafore, Stella Chen and Noah Do; team manager: Julie Langley.
* A Toast to Bread (Service Learning Challenge) First place
Team members: Anantika Manby, Aditi Manby, Ben Kinder, Aidan Klein, Keegan Wang, Helin Wang and Ethan Cheney; team manager: Julie Langley.
* Dark Mark (Improv Challenge) Second place
Team members: Kevin Wang, Jake Chansky, Sam Frohlich, Justin Lesko and Landon Schmidt-Warnecke; team manager: David Baxter.
Middle Level:
* 7 Wonders (Scientific Challenge) First place and Renaissance Award
Team members: Blakeley Bourke, Steffi Kim, Sadie Kim, Aadyaa Singhal, Jasmine Bandrio, Tristan Chan and Sydney Parcel; team manager: Julie Langley.
Renaissance Award description: This award is being given to the team for their impressive coding skills. The team coded three animation scenes using Java Script and more than 300 lines of code.
* We Haven’t Decided Yet (Engineering Challenge) First place
Team members: Sophia Loiselle, Sahana Subramanian, Adelaide Swenson, Amelia Han and Ava Zhang; team manager: Julie Langley.
* Technical Difficulties (Fine Arts Challenge) First place
Team members: Quintin Shiers, Ale Selden, Zoe Leung and Anya Viswanathan; team manager: Peter Selden.
* Heroic Villains (Fine Arts Challenge) Second place
Team members: Lexi Liu, Naomi Do, Ryan Kinder, Ben Lamperti and Alex Millman; team manager: David Baxter.
* Musically Inclined (Fine Arts Challenge) Third place
Team members: Trisha Choudhary, Alanna Larson, Daniel Lee, Maxwell Linke, Brendan Sung and Madeline Rosales; team manager: Julie Langley.
* DIdiots (Service Learning Challenge) First place
Team members: Ashwin Krishnaswamy, Isabella Sullivan, Hannah Zhou, Theodore Matheson, Varun Muralidhar and Ralph Morton; team manager: David Baxter.
* The Secret Society of Sarcastic Sloths (Technical Challenge) Second place
Team members: Anya Singh, Keira Weller, Jonah Battema, Annabelle Wang, Neil Pandya and Kaavya Dubey; team manager: Griffen Jones.
Elementary:
* You Know What, Let’s Skip ‘Em (Scientific Challenge) First place
Team members: Shayna Smith-Cutright, Jay Mehta, Esha Shroff, Claire Capaso, Veda Nayar, Catherine Morton and Guillem Sullivan; team manager: David Baxter.
