The Bee Cave Bee

The Imagine Mustaches, The Crafty Creators and The Technical Titans may sound like a line-up of bands playing Austin’s SXSW music festival, but these are actually teams of elementary school-age students from the Lake Travis school district who will put their creative talents on display at the Destination ImagiNation State Affiliate Tournament April 10-11 at Skyline High School in Dallas.

According to its website, Destination ImagiNation is a nonprofit, school-based program devoted to helping students gain practical life skills through interesting, entertaining and mind-boggling challenges. Teams are tested to think on their feet, work together and devise original solutions to satisfy community service, technical, scientific, fine arts, improvisational and structural challenges. Participants learn patience, flexibility, persistence, ethics, respect for others and their ideas and the collaborative problem-solving process. DI works with more than 250,000 children and young adults in 48 states and 50 nations. The program is guided by parents, educators, and community volunteers who support the art and skill of creative problem solving.

More than 2,400 students comprising 385 teams in multiple categories of competition took part in the Capital Area Regional Destination ImagiNation tournament held March 7 at Hendrickson High School. Lake Travis school district fielded 22 Challenge-based teams and six Rising Stars teams for the early learners. In all, the teams were comprised of 172 students from Lake Travis, Lakeway, and Serene Hills elementary schools, as well as Hudson Bend and Lake Travis middle schools. The event was the largest for the capital area region.

Destination ImagiNation’ trio qualifies for state tournament photo
Members of Lakeway Elementary School’s Imagine Mustaches are (from left) Grayson Wood, Marco Chen, Eshan Mehdiratta, Alex Imber, Payton Capps, Audrey Friloux and Meghana Singireddy. It is among three teams from the Lake Travis school district that recently qualified for the Destination ImagiNation State Affiliate Tournament to be held April 10-11 at Skyline High School in Dallas.
Lake Travis school district state-qualifying teams include:

• Lakeway Elementary School’s Imagine Mustaches, which is comprise of coaches Andrea Mehdiratta and Elizabeth Wood and team members Payton Capps, Marco Chen, Audrey Friloux, Alex Imber, Eshan Mehdiratta, Meghana Singireddy and Grayson Wood;

• Serene Hills Elementary School’s The Crafty Creators, which is comprised of Coach Marcella Meyer and team members Kate Brawley, Chloe Cucina, Mackenzie England, Kaitlyn Forton, Mia Gates, Andrew Meyer and Tanor Offel; and

• Serene Hills Elementary School’s The Technical Titans, which is compised of Coach Alicia Pounds and team members Ethan Acker, Arthur Blake, Ryder Farnsworth, Josiah Gonzales, Caden Offel and Malcolm Tucker.

UPdate - no LTISD teams made it to the Global finals.