Four years ago, sophomores Anjali Carl and Autumn Wallace were on the same Destination Imagination, or DI, team as fifth-graders. They won at regionals, but had their next competition canceled due to the Coronavirus pandemic, leaving them unable to advance to the DI global finals.

Fast forward to May 2024 and these two friends are in Kansas City, Missouri with the rest of the CPHS DI team, junior Helena Friedman, and sophomores Aryana Jahadi, Brynna Doty and Sindhu Chidambaram, celebrating after the award ceremony at global finals. Wallace and Carl worked for years together to get to that point and finally got to reap the benefits of their hard work.

Destination Imagination is a worldwide creativity competition for students. Competing teams create a play over the course of the season to perform at competitions. The DI global finals competition took place from May 22 to 25 in Kansas City, Missouri. The six-member team from CPHS advanced to global finals after winning the regional and state competitions and took home seventh place in the competition.

“[Finding out we got seventh] was honestly one of the best feelings ever,” Carl said. “My mom came up to me talking about how they were live-streaming the awards. We watched through it not expecting anything, but when they called out our names, we actually screamed. It was super exciting.”

Carl’s mom, Shirisha Reddy, serves as the parent manager for the team. She was with the team at global finals in Kansas City, and she mentored the students throughout the season. 

“What I love about DI is how it emphasizes creativity and teamwork with kids and how they take ownership of their project,” Reddy said. “When there are so many things vying for their attention, what they come up with is so completely theirs. That excitement and pride that they have when they get to tell the judges at the tournament what they’ve done and the process it took to get there–the trial and error, and the failures–I think that is my favorite part.”

The DI team, in addition to placing seventh, won a Da Vinci award for outstanding creativity and risk-taking at global finals. Only 13 of the hundreds of teams at global finals received this award. Reddy attributes the team’s success to teamwork and working to their strengths.

“I think it’s just kids who believe in each other,” Reddy said. “We have some kids who are really good at speaking, and we have kids who really like to build, and we have kids who write scripts, and I think it’s just that sense of working together.”

The team created a play for their competition. They were able to choose from six challenges to complete before the competition. In addition, every team must participate in an instant challenge that is given with no preparation and must be completed in five to ten minutes.

“Part of the instant challenges is that everyone has a different role or task,” Wallace said. “We’re all able to pitch in. One person can be building while another person is reading out the rules. It has helped me with my patience with other people.”

Despite their success, the team still made mistakes. According to Reddy, they were nervous due to the high stakes of the global competition. Many team members stumbled over a few of their lines and struggled during the instant challenge. They didn’t give up though, instead choosing to grow from the challenges they faced while creating a positive team environment, according to Reddy.

“It’s learning to give grace to your teammates when they are really busy, when they have a stumble,” Reddy said. “When we went to global finals this May, it probably didn’t go quite as smoothly as they would have wanted. But they chose kindness and they chose to be super supportive of each other. And that’s a skill you learn as you go through this process and those are things that I’ve really seen in the kids who have done this year after year.”

Carl has participated in DI since kindergarten. She initially got involved because her older sister competed for their school, but she loved it and has stuck with it since. 

“DI has made me a better person because it’s allowed me to definitely get better at my teamwork because I was not good at working in a team outside of DI,” Carl said. “I feel like I can definitely work better with people and it’s inspired me to get more creative because DI is very ‘thinking outside the box’.”

In addition to DI, Wallace participates in color guard and Carl is a member of FCCLA. They both take several advanced and AP classes. They said that skills from DI help them in their busy lives.

“In everyday life, I’m a lot better at communicating,” Wallace said. “A large part of DI is having to work together and make sure that everybody is on the same page. It’s easier for me to see other people’s point of view. So if I need to talk with my teachers about something, I’m able to do that a lot easier now.”