🏆 Destination Imagination 2026

🐆

Futuristic
Cosmic
Cheetahs

Seven 3rd & 4th graders from Ossining, NY — racing toward the 2026 NYDI Affiliate Tournament! 🚀

⚡ Mission: Reach Our Goal ⚡

$3630

$4,000

Raised Goal

90.75% — every dollar counts! ✨

We're accepting donations digitally through Venmo & PayPal. Scan the QR codes corresponding to the app of your choice to support the team! If you'd like to contribute another way, please contact one of the coaches.

Venmo

venmo

PayPal

Coach Kim is coordinating all fundraising on behalf of the Futuristic Cosmic Cheetahs. Funds raised are used only for team expenses such as competition fees, materials, and travel related to Destination Imagination. No funds are used for personal purposes.

Meet the Cheetahs

Click or hover a card to flip and read their bio.

Aria

Hi , I'm Aria! I love steak , Korean pancakes, and chocolate ice cream. I also love kittens, axolotls, and puppies. My favorite book series is Dork Diaries. I study violin and love reading and creating art. I like DI because we get to engineer, create plays, and it's a place where I can be myself.

Axios

I'm Axios, my favorite food is Lamb chops. My favorite animal is a Tiger. One of my favorite book series is 'I survived'. I also enjoy playing soccer, basketball and learning and solving math problems. I like D.I. because it teaches you to be a great leader.

Gabe

I love to read and create stories on my computer, style myself and build Legos, I also like to play video games. I like DI because I like building and performing.

Jack

Hi! I'm Jack some of the things I like to do are watching movies (mostly marvel tee hee), Playing sports (baseball and soccer plus kickball), and drawing. Some of my favorite foods are steak, fried fish, and hashbrowns. I like DI because it has to do with creativity I may not have mentioned this but I love building, acting, and I think I mentioned it ART A R T. I also like DI because DI is a place to have fun people still have fun.

Leonard

Hi, I'm Leonard. My current obsessions are basketball, French fries and otters. I enjoy 3D printing, pen artistry, magna-tile architecture, and snowboarding. The reason I love Destination Imagination is because it's the perfect mix of my two favorite things—building cool stuff and hanging out with my crew.

Norah

I'm Norah! I love cheese burgers & apple pie, red pandas and the Ella Enchanted book. I also like reading, writing and art. I like Destination Imagination because it has reading, writing and art and so so much more! I also love the instant challenges and making up skits with my team!

Riley

I'm Riley! I love oreo ice cream cake, extra cheese pizza, kittens and Babysitters Club. I also enjoy gymnastics, cheerleading and skateboarding. I like Destination Imagination because it is fun working with my friends and I enjoy acting.

Our Coaches

Coach Kim

Coach Kim is a community-loving, family-focused foodie who enjoys traveling and giving back. She loves watching the Futuristic Cosmic Cheetahs dream big, work hard, and grow together. Coaching this incredible team has been an out-of-this-world journey filled with creativity, teamwork, and cosmic pride!

Coach Alex

A former Odyssey of the Mind participant and now a second-year Destination Imagination coach, I bring a love of engineering, math, programming, and problem-solving into everything I do. I'm passionate about helping kids develop creativity, confidence, and leadership through this incredible program.

Team Helper

Nadya

I'm a proud parent of two incredible humans and have a deep love for the arts, advocacy, and community building. This is my second year supporting our Destination Imagination team alongside the amazing Coach Kim and Coach Alex. Our team is filled with brilliant, creative, and energetic young minds who inspire me every day!

🚀 Our Journey to the Tourney

We're the Futuristic Cosmic Cheetahs, a Destination Imagination team from Ossining, NY comprised of seven 3rd & 4th graders passionate about creativity, problem-solving, and teamwork. Through Destination Imagination, we've learned to think outside the box, collaborate, and build solutions that combine science, engineering, and imagination.

This year, we're competing at the 2026 NYDI Affiliate Tournament at SUNY Broome Community College in Binghamton, NY. Your support helps cover tournament registration, travel, lodging, and materials — ensuring every team member can participate and represent our community on a larger stage.

Gallery

Snapshots from our journey.

This Year's Selected Challenge

The 2025–26 Service Learning Challenge: Give and Take

Teams choose a real community need, plan and carry out a project that addresses it, and identify a Point of Conflict — a situation where different people or groups disagree. We research negotiation strategies, create a Negotiation Plan, and weave our project and results into a theatrical presentation at the tournament.

🎭 A Glimpse of Our Performance

Our story takes place on a farm at sunset. Joe, Zoe, and Jaxon are farmers who grow food in a way that's better for the Earth and share half of what they grow with families in their community who need fresh fruits and vegetables. But farming isn't easy — they don't always have the right tools, and sometimes the soil, the water, and the sunlight are hard to read.

By night, the Gnomelins — Waba and Leef — come out. They're native to the land, nocturnal, and need dry soil to survive. When they roll in the dirt and accidentally turn off the water to stay dry, the farmers' crops suffer. Neither group knows the other exists… until one morning they meet. What follows is a misunderstanding that could drive them apart — and a conversation that changes everything.

Can two groups who need opposite things ever find a way to share the same land? The Gnomelins are so small — how could they possibly help? And what happens when everyone finally starts to listen?

We hope you'll join us at the tournament to see our performance and hear our message: When people listen, share, and work together, everyone grows stronger together.

What is DI?

Destination Imagination® is a global, volunteer-led nonprofit that hosts creative challenges for students in 48 states and 30 countries.

Destination Imagination® (DI) is a global, volunteer-led nonprofit organization that hosts Team Challenges for students who want to take on the entire creative process—from imagination to innovation. Students participate in DI in 48 states and 30 countries, and the program boasts more than one million alumni and 38,000 volunteers worldwide.

Here in New York, we are a vibrant and active Destination Imagination Affiliate. We host tournaments at the regional and state levels. At our tournaments, student teams get to showcase their unique solutions to science, technology, engineering, arts, math, and service learning Challenges, watch each other present, and celebrate their achievements together. Students who participate in DI build critical thinking skills, teamwork skills, creativity, self-esteem, and lifelong friendships—and DI is a phenomenal resume builder!

Learn more about DI on the NYDI website →

💡

100% Kid-Driven

The ideas, decisions, and solutions come entirely from the kids — not adults.

🧠

Creativity Over Memorization

Original thinking, risk-taking, and clever ideas are rewarded.

⚡

Real-World Constraints

Teams work with time limits, budgets, and surprise challenges.

🔧

Learning by Doing

Iteration, failure, and persistence are part of the process.

Skills That Last a Lifetime

Creative Problem Solving Public Speaking Collaboration & Leadership Engineering & Design Thinking Resilience Confidence

A Look Inside the Magic

Destination Imagination is like its own creative universe. Students who participate do things like:

Build Robots

Write Plays

Make Movies

Design Sets, Costumes & Props

Engineer Solutions to Real-World Problems

Create Original Works of Art

Give Back to Their Communities

Compete for a Spot at Global Finals

There's no other club or program quite like DI. When you learn how to solve complex problems creatively as a team, everything becomes possible!