By Peter Mikhael
Richardson’s Computer Science team advanced to Regionals after placing 1st in the UIL District competition at Townview Magnet in Dallas.
The competition consists of two parts. Students take a 40-question, 45-minute written test individually. Then a team of three students tries to solve a 12-problem, two-hour programming contest. The top three scorers in the written test advance to Regionals, but only the school that wins first overall advances.
In the written portion of the contest, junior Brian Richer placed second, senior Kevin Sun third, and freshman Emily Chen fourth. After the written test, Richardson had a combined score of 602 and TAG a combined score of 592.
“It was kind of stressful,” Sun said. “Our practice the day before went very well, so I wasn’t expecting to do bad, but I knew that our main competition, TAG, was very good and they would be hard to beat.”
One hour and 56 minutes into the programming contest, Richardson had solved 11 problems. With two seconds left, Sun solved the last problem and submitted a working program that satisfied the judge’s data.
“I didn’t think about it too much and just tried to do the best I could,” Sun said. “I didn’t perform as well as I wanted to, but it was still enough to win the competition for us.”
The programming team, which consisted of Sun, Richer, and sophomore Oscar Ward, solved all 12 problems for a total score of 1287 out of 1440. TAG scored 1053, and all other schools scored below 1,000.
Last year, Richardson hosted the UIL Computer Science contest and placed third after Pearce and TAG. Computer science teacher Henry Vo said not advancing to regionals last year motivated this year’s team to work harder and win.
“We were the only team to finish the problem packet,” Sun said. “I got so excited, I stood up, slammed my desk, and yelled ‘sweep,’ and one of the moderators had to tell me to calm down. Winning has probably never felt that good, and it especially feels good that I had made it farther than the people who helped me learn computer science.”