The Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts claimed the top spot at the sixth annual Governor's All-State Coding Competition on April 30 at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.
The team, made up of seniors Trey Clark of Harrison and Joshua Stallings of Little Rock and junior Robert Boerwinkle of El Dorado, qualified earlier this year through a regional competition and beat out 16 other teams participating.
"Obviously it feels really great," said Clark. "We competed this last year and there was a lot of, 'Did we do enough on this problem?' 'What if someone else did this?' There was (concern) on what we did and didn't do and we were like maybe there's a chance we can place but weren't sure.
"But it's a different feeling this year -- like we have done literally every problem we think we could have besides this one area. So we went from everyone scrambling to try to get these last couple points that we think we could get to making sure we could get this final -- 'Can we complete everything?' And that was a really good feeling."
Teams work to solve various coding problems based on various scenarios in the contest. Each problem receives a score, and in the event of a tie, the amount of time used to answer the questions is used, with the team entering the most correct answers in the least amount of time earning the advantage.
"It's nerve-wracking whenever they go, like, third place, second place, and I go, 'That's a good team,' 'That's a good team,'" said ASMSA computer science instructor and team sponsor Nicholas Seward. "So I was genuinely very excited and surprised. Like, I knew they had the capability of winning, but there's a lot of other amazing teams in the state, so it really meant something to win first."
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Gov. Asa Hutchinson congratulated the winners of the competition, held in the Ida Waldron Auditorium at UCA.
"I am grateful for the enthusiasm of students and educators who have put Arkansas at the forefront of computer science education in the United States." he said in a news release. "As more of our students elect to take coding and computer science classes every semester, this competition will continue to inspire creativity and ingenuity in young coders."
Each member of the team received a $2,000 award to be deposited into a 539 College Savings Plan. ASMSA will also receive $10,000 to support its computer science program for the team winning first place. The prizes were provided by a grant from ARCodeKids
"I'm just glad I didn't disappoint Seward," said Boerwinkle, laughing. "I know full well I could have disappointed Seward because there were worries about how much practice we did and all of that stuff, which, we did practice. It was very exciting, though."
Seward said there was a running joke throughout the several days leading to the competition where he kept on pretending they were not practicing.
"It was kind of a cool secret sauce to have people that have already been to All-State," he said. "That's kind of rare to have. And now we'll have Robert on next year's team, so we'll have some continuity to help them out."
Stallings said he expected the competition to be a little more difficult but felt he prepared well.
"I was worried with bringing enough resources and everything like that, but honestly didn't find it too difficult," he said.
Over 150 teams across the state participated in the digital regional competition before the top 16 went on to compete in All-State.
In other placements, Don Tyson School of Innovation in Springdale team members Lucas Kellar, Dylan Crawford and Eli Wetzel placed second and each will receive a $1,000 scholarship; the team was sponsored by Jessica Mabie. The third-placed team of Star City High School with members Reid Dutton, Tony Chen and James West each will receive scholarships of $500; the team was sponsored by Amy Dreher. The schools that sponsored the first-place, second-place, and third-place teams received $10,000, $6,000, and $4,000, respectively, to support their computer science programs.
ASMSA also produced two of the five state finalists in 2022 Arkansas Computer Science Educator of the Year, with veteran CS instructor Carl Frank joining Seward.