The Fort Hunt Elementary team took second place in their division at the Destination Imagination Northwest Regional competition March 1.

The team, comprised of Megan Donnelly and Claudia Lovegrove, Kathleen Donnelly, Catie Liebeck, Elizabeth Quin, Katie Sargent, and Sarah Holloway, will now advance to compete at the state competition in Richmond on April 26, at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Destination Imagination is an international program for students up to, and including college students and military personnel. Teams select one of five team challenges in the fall and work on solutions to those challenges which they present at a regional competition in the spring.

Teams compete against similar aged students who are working on the same problem. In addition, each team must present a solution to an instant challenge which they only learn of at the time of the competion. Both the team challenge and the instant challenge require the team to learn to work together cooperatively and creatively under time constraints towards a solution which has neither a right nor wrong answer.

THE FORT HUNT TEAM chose the challenge "Once Improv A Time." The team was randomly assigned a character from one classic fairytale, an event from a second fairytale, and a surprise setting for the story to take place. Once these improv elements were assigned, the team had a 30-minute planning period to design a story involving all of these elements as well as a team-created moral of the story, to create as many props and costumes as they desired entirely from newspaper and tape, and to create an object out of newspaper and tape that would be incorporated into the story and which either moved or changed shape.

After the planning period the team was given six minutes to present their performance to a three judge panel and a live audience. One minute prior to their performance, the team had to draw three letters at random and make up a phrase which they would incorporate into their performance.

More information about Destination Imagination may be found on the Internet at www.destinationimagination.org (National site), www.divirginia.org (State site), and www.nwvadi.org (Regional site). Questions or comments regarding the Fort Hunt team may be directed to their team manager, Michael Donnelly, at michaeldonnelly@cox.net.