Mountain View High School’s Destination Imagination team “Out With a Bang” placed first in Challenge B at the Silicon Valley Regional Tournament, which took place at Independence High School in San Jose on Feb. 28. The team is made up of students Tatum Millet, Reese Walter, Miki Sinclair, Luke Knight, Lucas Bondy, Connor Keane, and Anthony Ebbs.

Destination Imagination (DI) is “an educational program where student teams independently solve open-ended Challenges and present their solutions at tournaments,” according to the California DI website. Solutions to Main Challenges are typically presented in the form of timed skits with original stories. Teams are also required to participate in Instant Challenges in which they are expected to yield a solution in just five to eight minutes.

“We did the [Scientific] Challenge this year,” senior Tatum Millet said. “The Challenge is centered around the science of sound waves and attempts to combine artistic and technical portrayals of sound.”

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Due to their success at Regionals, Out With a Bang will compete at the State Tournament in Riverside on March 28. Millet explained the team’s goals and ideas for the next step.

“We want to put more work in before States. We crammed all the prep for regionals into about four days and don’t really want to go through that again. We’re planning on revamping the whole thing. The state tournament has more competition and the bar is set higher, so we have to put in some more hours and polish things,” Millet said. This is Millet’s seventh and final year participating in DI.

“In DI, you can be unapologetically geeky about anything you’re interested in,” she said. “I remember sitting outside painting people’s faces at a tournament just because and joining in mass renditions of Bohemian Rhapsody. Everybody’s smart in different ways and DI showcases that.”

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