ImagiNations run wild in district
By Caitlyn Kelleher Journal Reporter

Memorial-Spaulding Elementary School student Sarah Ward with drummer Stephen Balcher behind her.

They take the competition floor with a problem to solve, a skit to share and an invention to show.

They are the Destination ImagiNation teams representing the North Middlesex area. The five teams took the floor at the regional competition on Saturday, March 10, in Ayer, to show off more than three months of work in solving a single problem.

"It is fun because the challenges are interesting," said seventh grader Allison LaFleur. "Even though they are tough it is fun to see what other people come up with from the other schools."

Destination ImagiNation was created a number of years ago as a problem-solving challenge for students at various age levels. The teams compete on a regional basis against others in their age brackets who have chosen similar challenges, with winners moving up through the levels to state and national competitions.

The five teams from North Middlesex include two teams from North Middlesex Regional High School, a team from Spaulding Memorial and two teams from Hawthorne Brook Middle School.

Hawthorne Brook Middle School student Kianna Dutton (in dress) trys to get a gumball from the machine, but Andrew Shepard as the jawbreaker won't allow the gumballs to leave the machine. Journal Photos / Brittany Durgin

"It's a good winter time activity," said coach Karen Rapoza.

Rapoza is in her fourth year of coaching teams. She is overseeing two teams, one for each of her children.

The team she coaches out of Spaulding created a skit around the concept that Earth has kicked Pluto out of the solar system and Neptune has to defend the smaller planet. The Hawthorne Brook team is working on a skit where gumballs are at war with a jawbreaker.

David LaFleur coaches another of the middle school's teams for his daughter's group.

He had coached Allison's soccer team and decided it was time to get involved in this project.

"In sports you can actually help them and show them how to do something," he said. "Here you can't help."

As a coach he is allowed to point the kids toward ideas and concepts, help read directions and can provide safety assistance with the tools.

"I have to let them use their imagination and not mine," he said. "That's hard."

The team is working on a challenge regarding flight. They have had to build an aircraft, an elevator and a launch device to send the aircraft into orbit around a 20- by-20 foot box.

"We have been working with them together pretty much every day this week," he said and added "our basement is full of planes."

Allison has decided that this year's challenge "is probably the most difficult one I have ever done, but we have figured out how too make the plane fly."

Mike Coffey coaches a team for his first grade daughter Sarah.

"We have a challenge where the kids have to build a landmark that changes by an invention, and they have to make the invention," he said.

The four team members, ages five to eight, have created a supershaker that will convert the Townsend Fire Department into the Townsend Police Department with not only changes to the building but also to the employees and the dogs - Dalmatians to K-9s.

The group has met for an hour a week since December like most of the other groups. And Coffey says it's a little but crazy but fun.

The North Middlesex Regional School District sponsored 20 teams at the Destination Imagination Tournament, held in Ayer on Saturday, March 10. Five primary grade, non-competing teams, presented "Make It New, It's Up To You." Eight of the 15 competing teams placed first or second in their respective challenges. Results are: NMRHS-Round About Courage, first place; NMRHS-Switching Traditions, second place; Nissitissit-CSI:DI, second place; Hawthorne Brook-Direct Flight, first place; Hawthorne Brook-Round About Courage, second place; Varnum Brook-Cardiology, first place; Squannacook-Cardiology, second place; and Squannacook-Round About Courage, second place. The four teams that placed first will compete in the State Finals on the WPI Campus in Worcester on Saturday, March 31.