DI Tournament

DI+Tournament

Alex Boisvert, Staff Writer

On March 17 and on April 7th, Miah Pinard and her DI team entered the gym of Goffstown High School to see over 20 schools and students of all ages mingling, preparing for their skits, and listening to the distant sounds of Cotton Eyed Joe playing in the background. The sensation was both nerve-wracking, seeing all these people, but also exciting.

If you aren’t sure what DI is, it’s an acronym for Destination Imagination, and it’s a global organization that gives teams a challenge to solve in an eight minute performance, whether it’s a scientific, technical, fine arts, or structural type of challenge. Each team creates a story with a clear distinct beginning, middle, and end that follows the guidelines of the challenge. They take their skit  and perform it at regional, state, and global competitions. The GHS team participated in the regional tournament on March 17th, and the states tournament on April 7th. Soon they will be moving on to the global competition. Each team then gets an instant challenge that can be based on building, improving a story or both. They have no idea what they are going to do until they do it.

Miah Pinard has been participating in DI for three years, her freshman, junior, and senior years, “But some people, like Ian Winrow, have been involved for 12”. Miah recalls some of the past skits. “My freshman year, our story was about people being the voices of various radio stations and getting pulled out into the now broken radio to fix it before the owner wakes up and throws it away,” she remembers, “and this year was about a cul de sac in revolutionary Williamsburg, Virginia, and the patriots and loyalists despise each other, destroying their business by avoiding each other at all costs,” she explains. Miah played the only neutral person and created a carnival game to bring them all together, and they soon realize they aren’t as bad as they think. This past year, the GHS team have received second place medals, first place medals and renaissance awards for innovation, technical creativity, and artistic talent “Like making a cat out of felt as a prop and using large sets, flutes, a snare drum and music we composed to show the setting of Virginia 1776.”

To prepare for these skits, they typically spend from September to October to February until March building their sets and props and writing the script which can be 10-15 hours a week. “We work during school vacations which can end up being 10 hours everyday at a meeting, so a total of 50 hours throughout the whole week.” She explains.

The road in order to get where the DI team is today was very long, strenuous, and worth it. A lot of work that has been put into their skit, and obviously it paid off. Miah and her team are very excited to be moving on to globals in Tennessee and meeting people from all over the world. She is proud of where she is and what she has accomplished with the GHS Destination Imagination team.