PARIS – Their didgeridoo did do what they wanted it to do.

And the Oxford Hills Middle School troupe captured fourth place in the state competition and won the Renaissance Award for their creativity in creating a musical instrument for the Destination Imagination competition.

“On our journeys we sometimes encounter exceptional travelers who entertain and enlighten us along the way,” the award read. “The Renaissance Award recognizes those among us who demonstrate extraordinary amounts of effort and preparation or outstanding skill in engineering design or performance.”

The didgeridoo is an Aborigine’s musical wind instrument. The team members designed one as a stage prop for their presentation.

The seven students from OHMS won a regional competition at Central Maine Technical College in Auburn on March 15 by defeating 12 other middle school teams in the live theater category.

Then on April 6, they competed against 19 other middle schools in the state competition and finished fourth.

Holbrook, Holden, of SAD 63 took first place; second place went to Gray-New Gloucester Middle School and Skowhegan Area Middle School; third place was won by Skyway Educational Learning Center, Presque Isle, SAD 1.

Team manager (and parent of a performer) Sally Reis said there were some nerves evident at first in the students, but they settled down and gave a solid performance.

“They have matured a lot on how they handle certain situations,” Reis said. “The performance was excellent. When there was a problem they would improvise and that only happened once or twice.

“Only some of the parents who had seen the play before knew something was different,” she said.

Last year, four students from this OHMS group competed in the middle school category even though they were in sixth grade at the Guy W. Rowe Elementary School.

The four were Amelia Moore, Daniel Millett, Danielle Giansanti and Benjamin Reis.

They also won at the regional level and placed seventh in the state competition. This year Molly Pietroski, Justin Gilmore and Kyle Ivey joined the four veterans. All the students are from Norway, except Pietroski, who is from Paris.

In this category the students had to create a live performance about a troupe of entertainers, which is disrupted. They then have to continue with the show.

Points are awarded for the novelty and uniqueness of the live performance, the disruption and how the students deal with the disruption.

Sally Reis, the OHMS team’s manager, said the students choose the subject last fall.

jsmedley@sunjournal.com