Kewaunee Destination Imagination team places second at Global Finals

KEWAUNEE – After starting their Destination Imagination program earlier this year, Holy Rosary School in Kewaunee sent its first team to Global Finals at the end of May, where they earned second place in their challenge.

“We started this team in September and this was our first year with any teams,” said Nikky Urbaniak, Destination Imagination School Coordinator at Holy Rosary School. “We had three teams — one of them was young so they were non-competitive, and then we had an elementary and a middle school team. Both of them actually qualified for Globals, but the elementary team decided to stay home.”

The middle school team, named The HRS Rockets, competed in the Technical Challenge, which asked students to create a game show while incorporating a variety of technical elements.

“They created a game show called “Guess the Punchline”... Urbaniak said. “The host asked jokes and then the contestants had to guess the punchlines… They had a ‘reveal’ where they had a mechanical arm that gave the winner a ticket and then revealed a puppy they won at the end. They had to have a ‘gimmick’ so they used bearings and PVC pipe to create a rolling TV screen that had all of the jokes on it so the contestants could read the jokes as they were answering the questions.”

After qualifying at both Regional and State tournaments earlier in the year, the team made the trek to Kansas City to compete at Global Finals against teams from all over the world.

“The kids and I had a blast,” Urbaniak said. “We got to tour Kansas City a bit, we got to visit other teams and go see other teams… It was just all around a really awesome experience.”

The HRS Rockets went home with second place and a High Instant Challenge Score award.

“Nobody saw it coming,” Urbaniak said. “We were pretty astonished.”
Other area teams also competed at Global Finals, with The Four Horse Them from Algoma earning eighth place in the Improvisational Challenge.