Nine Mercer Island Destination Imagination teams earned awards at the state DI competition and advanced to the Global Finals competition. All of Mercer Island’s 12 teams had five weeks to refine their regional Virtual Team Challenge and only 48 hours to develop a solution for a new Instant Challenge. The Mercer Island teams earned a total of five first-place finishes, three second-place finishes and one third place. They also received five High Instant Challenge Awards and one DaVinci Award.

Secondary Level:

* Hark Medlee (Engineering Challenge)

Team members: Jake Chansky, Kevin Wang, Landon Schmidt-Warnecke, Sam Frohlich, Renee White, Wesley Ho and Justin Lesko. Team manager: David Baxter.

* 7-bit (Technical Challenge)

Team members: Sidh Shroff, Eliot Geer, Daniel Marcus, Julius Perez, Lucas Lessard, Tyler Langley and Sol Park. Team manager: David Baxter.

* Davinci Award description: This team was recognized for their outstanding creativity. Their movie was performed in rhyming verse, they created original 1980s style video graphics, designed and created electromechanical devices in their solution, and edited the film in a novel way to create the illusion of people standing next to each other.

* Mystery High (Technical Challenge)

Team members: Bobby Selden, Gareth Tatum, Ben Viafore, Stella Chen and Noah Do. Team manager: Julie Langley.

* Dark Mark (Improv Challenge)

Team members: Kevin Wang, Jake Chansky, Sam Frohlich, Justin Lesko and Landon Schmidt-Warnecke. Team manager: David Baxter.

Middle Level:

* 7 Wonders (Scientific Challenge)

Team members: Blakeley Bourke, Steffi Kim, Sadie Kim, Aadyaa Singhal, Jasmine Bandrio, Tristan Chan and Sydney Parcel. Team manager: Julie Langley.

* We Haven’t Decided Yet (Engineering Challenge)

Team members: Sophia Loiselle, Sahana Subramanian, Adelaide Swenson, Amelia Han and Ava Zhang. Team manager: Julie Langley.

* Heroic Villains (Fine Arts Challenge)

Team members: Lexi Liu, Naomi Do, Ryan Kinder, Ben Lamperti and Alex Millman. Team manager: David Baxter.

* DIdiots (Service Learning Challenge)

Team members: Ashwin Krishnaswamy, Isabella Sullivan, Hannah Zhou, Theodore Matheson, Varun Muralidhar and Ralph Morton. Team manager: David Baxter.

Elementary:

* You Know What, Let’s Skip ‘Em (Scientific Challenge)

Team members: Shayna Smith-Cutright, Jay Mehta, Esha Shroff, Claire Capaso, Veda Nayar, Catherine Morton and Guillem Sullivan. Team manager: David Baxter.