Team Ignivomus ready to perform their skit. Credit: Courtesy 
Kenzie Olin, who played a reporter in the skit. 
The Stormy Hedgehogs win the Da Vinci Award. The Stormy Hedgehogs winning the Da Vinci award: From left to right – Eli Crespo, Owen Gentle, Conan Nascimento, Katteri LeBlanc, Liliana Makris (not pictured Dylan Hatton and Reagan Lampinen). 
The Stormy Hedgehogs are in the midst of their challenge, assembling their seesaw – a free-standing structure that needs to hold weights as far from the base as possible. Credit: Courtesy 
Big Brain Baddies won first place at the regionals competition on March 7, 2026! Left to right: Maisy Dellogono, Isabelle Moorman, Aubrey Mederos Parry, Eva Parsons, Kaley Hersh, Mira Gaudreau, Meadow Blancard Back: Madelyn Grierson 
Painting the props got a little messy for the Big-Brained Baddies. Left to right: Isabelle Moorman, Aubrey Mederos Parry, Mira Gaudreau, Kaley Hersh. Credit: Courtesy 
The Big-Brained Baddies taking their final bows after their performance. Left to right: Meadow Blanchard, Isabelle Moorman, Maisy Dellogono, Eva Parsons, Aubrey Mederos Parry, Kaley Hersh, Mira Gaudreau. Credit: Courtesy 
The Big-Brained Baddies take first place at States. Left to right: Meadow Blanchard, Eva Parsons, Kaley Hersh, Isabelle Moorman, Mira Gaudreau back: Aubrey Mederos Perry, Maisy Dellogono. 
The Big-Brained Baddies with their favorite prop. Left to right: Aubrey Mederos Parry, Maisy Dellogono, Isabelle Moorman, Kaley Hersh back (standing): Meadow Blanchard, Eva Parsons.
Three Jaffrey-Rindge Destination Imagination teams placed in the top two in their divisions at New Hampshire state competition this weekend, showcasing their ingenuity, creativity and problem-solving skills.
The first and second-place finishes qualified all three teams to compete at the next level of competition — Globals — but due to financial constraints and a five-week turnaround between competitions, managers say the state competition will be the end of the season for Jaffrey and Rindge students.
A mixed middle-high team and two elementary school teams qualified at regional competition for the state finals, held at Bedford High School this weekend. Elementary teams the Stormy Hedgehogs and the Big-Brained Baddies competed in separate challenges, while the middle-high team, Ignivomus, competed in the high school level fine arts challenge.
Destination Imagination is a program where children have to create a skit centered around different challenges related to science, technology, engineering, arts and math skills, including imagining and creating sets, costumes, and building engineered devices to satisfy the requirements of their challenge.
Ignivomus participated in the Fine Arts challenge, where they crafted a skit about characters who take different paths, becoming a supervillian or a superhero. The team participated in the high-school division, despite the majority of the team being made up of middle schoolers, and placed second overall.
The team consists of Kaydence Blouin, Timothy Moorman, Azrielle Stenerson, Brianna Minihan and Kenzie Olin.
Ignivomus Team manager Taylor Furtado, who also teaches sixth-grade math in the district, said one of the aspects of getting ready for state competition is refining their skits based on the feedback at regional competition. They added additional woodworking elements to their set, and took their skit to the next level.
“It was amazing to see the progress from the beginning of the year to now,” said Furtado.
Madelyn Grierson, the team manager for Jaffrey Grade School team, the Big-Brained Baddies, said her team took home a first-place finish, coming off another first-place finish at regionals. The team, consisting of fourth and fifth-grade students Isabelle Moorman, Meadow Blanchard, Aubrey Mederos Parry, Maisy Dellogono, Kaley Hersh, Mira Gaudreau and Eva Parsons, participated in the Scientific Challenge, where they researched and crafted a skit about the science of human memory.
Specifically, the Big-Brained Baddies researched memory bias and short attention span, crafting a skit following a girl through her first day of school and her journey to get to a party she was invited to, only to have her phone stolen along the way.
Grierson said the team was refining their skit right up until the competition, and really exemplified the teamwork required for Destination Imagination.
“They are such a collaborative group, they take everyone’s ideas into consideration, and they compromise,” said Grierson. “I’m really impressed with the solution they came up with this year and how well they worked together.”
Jordyn Babin, fourth grade teacher at Jaffrey Grade School and team manager for the Stormy Hedgehogs, who participated in the Engineering Challenge, said that in addition to a second-place finish at states, the Hedgehogs also received special recognition through the Da Vinci Award, which is given to a team for exceptional creativity and inovation.
The Stormy Hedgehogs, which consists of Owen Gentle, Eli Crespo, Conan Nascimento, Liliana Makris, Katteri LeBlanc, Reagan Lampinen and Dylan Hatton, had to build a structure that would hold weight as far from the base of the structure as possible, have an expanding element and have an element of risk-taking.
The Hedgehogs built their skit around an amusement park theme and built a seesaw with an expanding swing. Babin said the team had to completely reconfigure the structure from their regional competition, and was working on the project right up until the day before state competition. But, she said, that kind of teamwork and improvisation is all part of the magic.
“They all contributed on competition day. I’m very proud of their teamwork and creative thought. It was mindblowing,” Babin said.