Photos belong to the ADM Middle School and Future Engineers

Braylon Whipps (pictured above)

Two students from Adel-DeSoto-Minburn Middle School were recently honored at the national level for self-made creations.

According to the school, seventh grader Jake Noring and eighth grader Braylon Whipps were selected as national finalists in the 2024-25 Future Creatures Challenge, which is a national competition where kindergarten through 12th grade students draw or digitally illustrate the process of how a rainforest vertebrate evolves in the distant future. The middle school states that Noring’s “Pygmy Ground Sloth” design and Whipps’ “Yellow Caiman” were picked as two of the four national finalists in the middle school division, as they receive a Future Engineers t-shirt and a $25 Amazon gift card.

In addition, Whipps’ creation was named the Grand Prize winner for the 6th-8th grade division of the 2024-25 Creatures Challenge for correctly predicting the Amazon’s Black Caiman evolvement with the climate change turning the rainforest habitat into an open savanna. ADM Middle School adds that he will also have an endangered species adopted in his name through the World Wildlife Fund.

Jake Noring (pictured below)

Whipps’ “Yellow Caiman”

Noring’s “Pygmy Ground Sloth”