{"id":121207,"date":"2014-03-20T23:29:23","date_gmt":"2014-03-21T05:29:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/dolores-girls-improv-team-going-to-state-finals-in-destination-imagination\/"},"modified":"2014-03-20T23:29:23","modified_gmt":"2014-03-21T05:29:23","slug":"dolores-girls-improv-team-going-to-state-finals-in-destination-imagination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/dolores-girls-improv-team-going-to-state-finals-in-destination-imagination\/","title":{"rendered":"Dolores girls improv team going to state finals in Destination Imagination"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Zenda
Zenda Olson, Tayonna Gallegos, Courtney Corbitt and Sarah Cochrane hold up their trophy for winning the regional competition. Coach, Sandi Corbitt, stands with the team. Michelle Cochrane also coached.<\/span>Courtesy photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But a group of four eighth-grade girls from Dolores Middle School thrive on just such a challenge and will be headed to the state competition after a first-place improv performance at the Destination Imagination regional competition.<\/p>\n

Destination Imagination is a nationwide organization that helped the Dolores students develop creativity, problem-solving and teamwork, they said.<\/p>\n

Teams of up to seven students normally form in the fall and select a project in one of seven categories that range in focus from the sciences to improv theater. All the teams present their projects in a skit during March in Colorado.<\/p>\n

The four regional champs from Dolores didn\u2019t start practicing until February, and their success against the five other teams surprised even their coach, Sandi Corbitt.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they came to do their performance that day, they got everything right,\u201d Corbitt said. Corbitt and Michelle Cochrane, both involved parents, jumped in to coach the team after a teacher who coached in previous years left the school.<\/p>\n

Team members Courtney Corbitt, Zenda Olson, Sarah Cochrane and Tayonna Gallegos studied elements of stage make-up and potential character types to prepare. This year, the improv category emphasized periods of history, and the students were asked to draw on prior knowledge to give a convincing performance.<\/p>\n

Five minutes before the show, the girls were told which elements to use and given a problem for the play.<\/p>\n

The team went on to tell the story of monster mascot, played by Corbitt, and a witch, played by Olson, watching a game in a stadium. The witch broke the stadium lights because her team was losing.<\/p>\n

A mechanic from the 1960s, played by Cochrane, and a web designer, played by Gallegos, worked to turn the lights back on.<\/p>\n

All four students play well off each others\u2019 cues on stage and had competed in Destination Imagination before, they said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Olson, Tayonna Gallegos, Courtney Corbitt and Sarah Cochrane hold up their trophy for winning the regional competition. Coach, Sandi Corbitt, stands with the team. Michelle Cochrane also coached.Courtesy photo But a group of four eighth-grade girls from Dolores Middle School thrive on just such a challenge and will be headed to the state competition […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":121208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5794,5735],"tags":[902,910],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-121207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-news","tag-entertainment-general","tag-theatre"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121207"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=121207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}