4 is the Loneliest Number (Part II)

Austin, Shelley and I went to Lubbock, Texas this weekend for the Texas State Destination Imagination tournament. Elementary through High School age kids from all over the state, including the Rio Grande Valley (about 18 hours by car!), were there representing the various regions from which each was sent as a winning team. Austin had four teams from his elementary school who competed at the State competition, which was held on the surprisingly good-looking campus of Texas Tech.

We put Austin on a bus at 5:00am Friday morning, then got a hot cup from McDonalds and hit the highway. Next, we dropped Braden off in Granbury (Jamie and Jeff were going to keep him but Jeff's Grandfather died in New Jersey and they were there for the funeral). Braden, suspecting something was askew, kept asking "where Jamie go?", with his palms turned up and a wrinkle across his forehead. How can someone so devilish be so utterly charming at the same time?

Anyway, we got to Lubbock about 3pm, then waited for the bus to arrive closer to 5. After a quick visit, the kids got back on the bus and the parents followed to Tech, where there was a "pin exchange" for team-members at the United Arena (Bobby Knight's classroom). There were easily 1,500 kids on the floor of the arena, each with pins from their region to exchange with pins from other regions, as a sort of "social mixer" as well as collection opportunity. I could not believe the degree of seriousness with which some of these kids/sponsors took to this activity. There were people with hundreds (100's!) of pins of every shape and size, from multiple states and years. Austin's prize collection was a Fort Worth region pin set, which featured a stagecoach with spinning wheels, and three different colored horses, all attached to the stagecoach or each other by a thin chain. Austin did not want to trade any of the pins he had left by the time he needed just one horse to complete his collection, so he went to the wallet and made a girl a cash money offer for her horse. That boy is going to be an investment banker or a corporate raider someday, I just know it!

The next day Austin's team ("The Crazy Craniums") had to compete in an "Instant Challenge" at 10:20am. This is the event where the team is brought into a room with several judges, who present the team with a complex challenge and give them a few minutes to discuss and come up with a solution, then present their solution, then answer questions about their process and presentation. Every team in the elementary school age group (I'm guessing about 150 total teams) gets the exact same challenge, so they cannot discuss the nature of the challenge until the event is over. I am sorry to say that I have not yet asked him the details of the challenge. Suffice it to say, the team thought the challenge was much more difficult and complex than the regional challenge. Still they felt like they did ok.

Then we waited around on campus until 3:30 for their prepared challenge presentation. (This was the radio program they created with sound effects, set, costumes, etc...) They nailed their presentation, each one doing their part terrifically with no missed lines or cues. Everyone of the parents and kids were very excited to have them do so well and, frankly, to have it behind us.

Dinner on campus at Flatlanders (good bbq, bad shrimp, 2.5 stars) then on to the United Arena for the awards presentation. Out of 64 elementary teams which had the same prepared challenge presentation, Austin's team finished in 4th place, which meant they got a medal, but did not qualify for global competition to take place in Knoxville, TN in May. The kids were happy and the parents were thrilled!

The crazy neighbor across the street has a 5th grade daughter on a team from Hamilton who won 1st place (1st!) in the State and will be going to global competition. It is the first time I have ever seen our neighbor cry, ("crude tomboy" being a simple description of her, "borderline personality disorder" being the clinical definition) and I have to say it was very touching. The kids were absolutely ecstatic, and it was quite thrilling to see a team from our school win it all.

We were all exhausted, but got up at 5:30am on Sunday to drive back to Granbury to get all of Mama Hen's chicks back together in one nest as early as possible.

Austin got a certificate and a trophy from the school to go along with his medal and is about to get caught up on lost sleep, as are we all.

Fourth place was a very good showing for the team's first trip to State competition, and though the team was disappointed they did not win the right to go to Global competition this year, they are convinced that they will do better at State competition in Corpus Christi next year and go on to conquer the world. If this group of kids stays together, I have no reason to doubt them.