Lakeland Central School District qualified four teams for the New York State Destination Imagination Tournament

Lakeland Central School District qualified four teams for the New York State Destination Imagination Tournament at the Eastern Regional competition held this past Saturday, March 7 at Mercy College.

The district’s state qualifying teams included:

Benjamin Franklin ES -- Einstein’s Awesome Destiny (2nd place in Elementary Level Technical Challenge)

Lincoln-Titus ES -- The Fearless Five (3rd place in Elementary Level Fine Arts Challenge with 13 teams in the category.)

Lakeland Copper Beech MS -- Team Extreme (2nd place in Middle School Level Technical Challenge)

Lakeland Copper Beech MS -- The Brain Train (1st place in Middle School Level Technical Challenge, they also got 1st in Instant Challenge)

The District was well represented with 11 teams this year with a total of 67 students participating. Two teams are from Ben Franklin, one from George Washington, three from Lincoln-Titus, four from Copper Beech, and one from Lakeland High School. Five of the eleven are brand new teams including two of the state qualifiers-Einstein’s Awesome Destiny and Team Extreme. There were more than 70 teams participating in the regional tournament.

“The kids were amazing and did a great job in making Lakeland proud,” said District DI Coordinator Linda Swift.

The NY State competition will be held April 18 at Binghamton High School.

Destination Imagination (DI) is a worldwide educational problem-solving program for students that foster creativity, problem solving, and critical thinking. Each year, the DI organization issues six open-ended Challenges. Each team, consisting of 2 to 7 students, chooses one Challenge to solve out of these six, where the Challenge outlines a specific task or problem that must be solved.