Manhattan Christian students take global honors

By BROOK GRIFFIN, Chronicle Staff Writer

Nobody does it better than the students at Manhattan Christian School.

TIM KUPSICK/CHRONICLE Conner Van Dyken, from left to right, Brady Van Dyken, Olivia Kleinsasser, Sydni Ayers, Gavin DeJong, Emerald Toth and Danica Jansma hold up their winnings from the global Destination Imagination championship held in Knoxville, Tenn. Students from the third, fourth and fifth grades at the small private school near Manhattan took first place recently in the world finals for Destination Imagination.

“It was exciting to win,” fifth-grader Danica Jansma, 11, said as she showed off her gold-colored medal and a trophy.

The seven team members destroyed the competition from both the United States and abroad, beating out a host of other schools to take the top spot. They traveled to Knoxville, Tenn., for the competition, which attracted thousands of students in different divisions from all over the world.

“They beat out 73 teams to get this,” said Lisa DeJong, one of the assistant coaches for the team.

In addition to Danica, the team members are Sydni Ayers, 10, Emerald Toth, 9, Conner Van Dyken, 10, Olivia Kleinsasser, 9, Gavin DeJong, 11, and Brady Van Dyken, 11.

Last year, the same team in the same category placed second in the world finals.

The middle school team from Manhattan Christian was also at the finals and won the Da Vinci Award for creativity and took fourth place overall in the competition. A team from Manhattan High School took 17th place in its category.

The object of Destination Imagination is to use problem-solving skills on a large-scale task that students work on from September until about March. This year the Manhattan Christian students gave a presentation on the properties of light, which featured props, skits and science-fair type exhibits.

“They said ‘from the big state of Montana' then we all just started screaming,” Sydni said about hearing the news that they won. “We didn't really hear what they said next because we were all screaming.”

Students created a “man” from PVC pipe and old barbecue parts with a homemade hologram effect loaded inside. The entire contraption, which took months to complete, had to be shipped east along with the team for the competition.

They seemed as happy about the chance to destroy their project as they were to win, as shipping the gadgets back from Tennessee would have cost too much money, DeJong said.

“It was great to build things and then destroy them in the end,” Gavin said.

They also enjoyed the local scenery.

“We went to laser tag, and that was the funnest thing we did that wasn't Destination Imagination,” Sydni said. “But it was also fun to demolish it.”

Reader Comments