West metro school briefs: Teams take honors at Destination ImagiNation

West Metro teams take honors at ImagiNationA team of seven fifth-grade students from Oakwood Elementary School in Plymouth recently won first place at the Destination ImagiNation Global Finals competition in Knoxville, Tenn.

The team competed against teams from 45 states and 13 countries. The team also won the Renaissance Award for outstanding design, engineering or performance.

Their challenge this year, "Coming Attactions," was to create a four-minute movie preview and perform it live. The performance needed to include characters interacting from two different cultures, a technical special effect, a music soundtrack and two team choice elements.

Team members are: Duffy Davison, Conor Greenberg, Abby Kassmir, Mara McCollor, Elizabeth Page, David Sandall and Erica Svendahl. Team Managers are Jeff Page and Tricia Davidson.

Taking third place at the competiton was the E.D.U.C.A.T.E.D team from Hopkins High School.

Team members include: Ian Anderson, Natalie Polinsky, Fawzia Khan (team manager), Graham Giesting, Rebecca Gorlin and Rachel Gorlin.

The team chose to represent mythological characters, Coyote from the Hopi Nation and Anansi from the Ashanti tribe in Ghana.

Two teams from Robbinsdale took home fourth-place prizes.

The Neill Elementary School Ostriches, made up of Ben Egstad, Amya Enna, Simon Hanson, Henry Hubred, Natalie Kohn, Ali Roston and Abby Sobol, created a movie trailer, "The Virus of Venice," about children from Venice traveling back in time to Israel to find an antidote for a virus that was killing adults.

The Pink Ladies of Plymouth Middle School produced a movie trailer titled "The Adventures of the Pink Ladies."

Alexa Johnson starred as Ginger Flame; Leah Baker and Ciarra Fagerlie were her minions, Julia Roston and Kelly Mikkelson were Russian spies, and Mia Hanson and Alyssa Egstad played Swedish spies.

Destination Imagination is the largest non-athletic team sport in Minnesota. Each year, teams of up to seven students compete in the creative problem solving competition, with challenges involving technical and theatrical elements.

Patrick Bromelkamp, Neil Davis and Conrad Schmidt from Boy Scout Troop 3089 in Minneapolis have been named Eagle Scouts. Bromelkamp and Davis are recent graduates of Benilde-St. Margaret's, and Schmidt will be a senior there next year.

Bromelkamp and Davis have been in the scouting program for 12 years, Schmidt for 11 years.

Bromelkamp's project involved building 18 bluebird houses and clearing brush and debris at the Hiawatha Golf Course .

Davis's project was building 30 cribbage boards for St. Therese in Hopkins and playing cribbage with the residents.

For his project, Schmidt worked through the Minneapolis Park Department on revitalizing the Loon Lake Trolley Path on the east side of Lake Calhoun.

Girls ages 8-12 and their mothers or caregivers are welcome to participate. Each week participants will receive a 30-minute educational presentation on various health topics followed by 60 minutes of physical activity.

2011 yearbook gets excellence awardThe 2011 Hopkins High School yearbook, "Regalia," has been recognized for excellence and featured in the 2012 "Gotcha Covered Look Book, Vol. 10," celebrating the best of the best in yearbook design and creation.

The "Regalia" was one of 400 books selected from the 3,000 that were nominated.

The 2011 "Regalia" was created by co-editors-in-chief Sarah Evon, Michael Fishman and Mollie Kozberg. The 2012 "Regalia" was released on May 30.

A limited number of copies of the 2012 yearbook are still available to buy at www.jostens yearbooks.com.