Duck Duck Nose
The PSCSTA Winter 2017 programming contest is a wrap! This contest was unique in a number of ways. Although we had our typical programming and pizza, with approximately 260 students from 105 teams (23 teams from Bellevue and 10 from Issaquah), we had the highest number schools represented in our eight year history, with teams from as far away as Orting and Ellensburg. Also, in addition to our usual T-shirt distribution, every student received a rubber duck to help with their debugging (see Rubber Duck Debugging for more information).
Stephen Spencer, a first time judge said this of the contest: “I was impressed with how focused all of the kids seemed to be. They were excited to be there, and ready to be challenged with the problems they were given. I liked seeing the relief on their faces when I said ‘You’re correct!’ As a first time judge, I liked that there were clear instructions on how to run the contest prior to it starting, and that there was someone there that I could turn to if I had a question, or what to do next, or how to answer a participant’s question.” He did follow jokingly with “The lack of fruit snacks was appalling.”
Dec 2017 Contest keynote
I want to give a special thanks to Jeffrey Friedberg, Chief Trust Architect, Microsoft for giving a compelling speech that started by telling students to do what they love.
Thank you to Becky Howsmon, Matt Paulson, Kenny Chan, Miriam Brady, Anthony Papini, Kip Fern, and Kevin Wang from TEALS for sponsoring this event by providing food, t-shirts, space, last-minute printing, prize-wheel entertainment, and promotional assistance.
An additional shout out to all those who helped make the event happen: Lauren Bricker and Brett Wortzman for organizing, Jane Bissonnette for Judge Wrangling, Alec McTavish, the Master Of Google Spreadsheets, for registration, Daniel Lafferty for handling permission forms, Lawrence Tanimoto for handling all of the email and website communications, Brett Wortzman, Anna Burago, and Andrea Foegler for packet creation, Michael Hawker – Lead Judge, Emily Johnson (Advanced), Chad Magendanz (Novice), Andrew Fitz Gibbon (Novice) for being head division judges, and Kory Srock for finding the speaker.
Photos from the contest:
Novice winners
| Gold | Team 107 | Washington Middle School | Moses Miller |
| Silver | WHAT?lol | Roosevelt High School | Eugene Jahn Elias Haynie-Gay Simon MacLean |
| Bronze | 3 Eagles and a laptop |
Issaquah High School | Allen Aby Kunal Bhargava Hritik Arasu |
Advance division
all tied with 715 points, tie broken by time
| Gold | Delete System32 | Newport High School | Terrance Li Andrew Liu Neal Ma |
| Silver | Team TNN | Interlake High School/ Newport High School |
Ton Bodin Nathan Yan Amiya Gupta |
| Bronze | gg was close | Lakeside High School | Gireesh Mahajan Xander Fries Albert Li |
Please contact us for a copy of the results.