The Destination Imagination team advanced to Globals last month. They will be headed off to Kansas City around mid-May to participate in the final competition. Putting in hard work and effort has paid off for the team. They didn’t expect to make it this far and they couldn’t be more excited to be representing Klein at this huge competition.

This year they have been working on improv, which is acting out skits without a script. In this organization they offer a lot of different categories to chose to compete with. For the past two years they have done the same category.

“It’s acting and art and community work, but this year specifically we worked on improv,” junior Sarah Carter said.

The DI team had no idea they would come this far. At their state competition the team placed second, and this was a complete shock to everyone on the team. Advancing to the next round of competing was a big win for the team, and each competition gets bigger as they move up.

“State you go from competing against two other people to competing against 17 other people,” Carter said.

There is only seven people on each DI team so most of the teams are small but having such a select group of people makes becoming friends easier.

“Now that we are all such good friends, it helps that much more when we compete because we know how to work off of each other,” sophomore Peyton Cotrell said.

Destination Imagination is a completely student run organization, the sponsors and teachers have no part in the success of these students. In the beginning of the season the sponsors had to sign a form stating that they would have no part in the teams success during competitions

“It gives us accountability, if we succeed its not our sponsors success it’s our own,” sophomore Matthew Carey said.

In the competitions, the team goes through a series of different challenges to test their acting skills. With improv, the team doesn’t know what they will be doing until they receive the instructions.

“There’s a team challenge and an instant challenge, the team challenge this year is called heads up,” Carey sad.

When it comes to improv, there is no real way to prepare for competition. It’s not about memorizing lines or making sure their presentation is perfect. Improv is about thinking fast and being able to make a story out of anything.

“You just have to run through the process as many times as possible,” Carter said. “That way you can kind of know your team members acting styles and be able to work off of each other.”