T-L Photo/JOSIE BURKHART St. Clairsville’s Destination Imagination team, led by Carla Padilla, in front, advances to the global finals to compete with like-minded teams from around the world. With her are, from left, team members Ella Fulton, Garrett Sirbaugh, Jonah Hepburn and Bella Padilla and Assistant Superintendent Christina Laudermilt.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — St. Clairsville High School’s Destination Imagination team advanced to the global finals, where it will be competing against other teams.

Destination Imagination is a program in which students work together in teams to solve open-ended science, technology, engineering, art and math challenges designed to teach the creative process.

DI coordinator Carla Padilla said the program helps students develop independence, creativity, talent and teamwork.

“It really focuses on their independence as students and teams,” she said. “So my job as a team manager is just to facilitate.”

The group members are 10th-graders Ella Fulton, Garrett Sirbaugh, Jonah Hepburn and Bella Padilla.

The team picks one of six different challenges at the beginning of each season, which is a school year. Carla described the process, saying the group needs to read the challenge, understand the challenge, come up with different solutions to the challenge and then test their solutions.

The team will be heading to Kansas City, Missouri, from May 22-25 to compete against 600 other U.S teams and even teams from around the globe, hailing from places such as India and China.

At the beginning of each season, teams from around the globe also choose one of the six challenges to do, so the St. Clairsville team will be competing against other teams who chose the same challenge it did.

The team will use a scientific demonstration and story with “technobabble,” which is jargon commonly used in science fiction, that uses technical sounding but meaningless words to explain futuristic technology or other complex concepts at the global finals. The team’s challenge has been “Scientific, Worlds Beyond, Challenge.”

Each team gets a $150 budget for their challenge.

The team competed at regionals and then at the state level, where it finally landed a spot at globals.

The team will use this technical jargon to explain something through a skit members perform. Bella said the jargon contains a lot of buzzwords that sometimes don’t even make sense.

One of the team’s highest scoring items was its backdrops and costumes at regionals. Group members put on a skit with costumes, such as a bird, an astronaut, a robot and a monster.

The St. Clairsville team also won a Da Vinci award during regionals, which is a special award judges do not always give out unless they think a team deserved it. Judges awarded the team the Da Vinci because of its costumes.

Carla Padilla said at the finals, the team has to solve the challenge “Scientific, Worlds Beyond, Challenge,” and then present the challenge to the judges. Members have to create a script that shows how they solved the challenge, so it brings in science elements while also using their creativity to express how they solve the challenges.

Bella Padilla said she is excited to see all of the different kinds of people at the finals. She added she’s excited for the activity people do at the globals called pin trading, which is trading pins from other states and countries. Fulton, Hepburn and Sirbaugh all agreed they were excited for pin trading.

Sirbaugh said he is also looking forward to seeing how teams from other countries did the same challenge and their creativity.

“It is not only a program about creativity but a program that fosters strength through diversity of thought and experiences,” Bella Padilla said. “Global finals bring together people from around the world, people that have shared a common goal. A goal to be faced with a challenge but overcome it through teamwork, creativity and tenacity.”

The team will find out how it placed at finals during the closing ceremony of the day. The main challenge is worth 75% of the team’s score while members also get an instant challenge they have to do that is worth 25%. The team won’t find out the instant challenge until the day of the competition.

“I know everyone loves pin training, but my favorite part of globals is … you get to go and watch anybody that you want, walk into any room and watch any challenge,” Carla Padilla said. “But the prop storage is that they set it up, sort of like museum style, and you can just walk up and down the aisles and see everything that everybody else has made.”

The top 10 teams from each category will be named at the awards ceremony.

Bella Padilla said the team has practiced a lot for globals.

“Practice makes perfect, right?” she said.

She added that each member of the group has their own traits that stand out on the team, and combining all of their skills together is what makes them a good team.

“We all have our own different set of skills,” Bella Padilla said. “And we all have our different weaknesses, and we cover each other up. They complement each other very well.”

Fulton said she and Hepburn do more of the artsy side, while Bella Padilla and Sirbaugh do more of the technical side.

Hepburn said DI harbors creativity and teamwork that is lost in modern times, while enhancing friendships and the minds of all who do it.

“It just presents other opportunities for our students to show their creativity, their independence and their collaboration with each other,” Assistant Superintendent Christina Laudermilt said. “It’s also an amazing opportunity for students to go to globals and just have conversations with other students from around the country or from around different countries.”