High School Coders Excel in Annual EECS Programming Contest

Austin Cook

From left to right: Deven Nguyen, Jai Gandhi and Nicholas Robinson, members of the winning Asian Sensations team from Rogers High School.

The annual High School Programming Contest, hosted by the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, took place on March 9. This year's contest had more than 80 participants and 130 attendees from 10 schools.  

The challenges of the contest were designed for a speed-based programming competition. Each problem required parsing input, processing data and producing output according to specific rules or conditions. Each submission is judged by various members of the EECS faculty. 

The High School Programming Contest offers an opportunity for high schoolers in the state to test their coding knowledge while fostering teamwork in a lively, competitive setting. Through this initiative, contestants engage in hands-on coding exercises, honing their skills while collaborating with fellow teammates. 

Nicholas Robinson, a student from Rogers High School and a member of the first-place team, the Asian Sensations, said, "I thought the event was fun; the problems were fun," he remarked. "There were some interesting problems. The contest was a lot about speed, so we got lucky with how the time penalties worked out. But overall, I was happy with the competition. I thought we did well. I enjoyed the problems." 

Jeff Anderson, the coach of the Asian Sensations and a teacher at Rogers High School, said, "I'm not surprised they won. But I'm very proud of them. They worked hard this past year. They competed in the state competition and this competition last year. They've been working hard all year to make this happen," Anderson added. "They're all amazing. They're all amazing kids, and they have bright futures ahead of them." 

Robinson said, "It felt good to win. We really didn't do as well as we wanted to last year. And we had a good run this year. So, I was happy with our performance. It was better than we expected this year." Robison added, "I would just encourage anybody to come do these competitions. I think it's really fun. Whether it's in-person ones like this or online ones, it's always just fun to solve problems and hang out with people who are awesome and enjoy coding." 

At the end of the competition, four trophies were presented, with Dean Kim Needy presenting the first-place trophy, and various prizes were handed out to participants. 

Winners

First Place
Team: The Asian Sensations
Members: Deven Nguyen, Nicholas Robinson, Jai Gandhi
High School: Rogers High School

Second Place
Team: Three Fire Emojis
Members: Ellie Feng, Thomas Coolidge, Hudson Ledbetter
High School: Conway High School

Third Place
Team: The Rubber Duckies
Members: Xave Kapity, Ivan Freeman
High School: Haas Hall Academy Rogers

Most Creative
Team: 3 Tiny Whales
Members: Christopher Ramirez-Lazaro, Patrick Jiang, Maddox Sutton
High School: Fayetteville High School