The Computer Science UIL team traveled to Houston last weekend to compete in a large programming competition known as Code Wars.

The competition consists of teams from all different schools and sizes ranging from 1A to 6A. The students are given a packet containing 24 programming problems and are asked to attempt to do as many as they can in just only three hours. At the end of the three hour mark, the judges total up all of the points and declare the winners.

“It is one of the few contests where we get to go head to head with the larger schools,” computer science coach Terry Morris said.

This year, Morris brought three teams of three which included: seniors Thomas King, Matthew Cox, and Tyler Wolfford, junior Kalan Bonnette, and sophomores Nick Mugleston, Derrick Martin, Dajhaun Myles, Lovejot Singh, and Austin Girouard.

According to Morris, the team did not prepare for this contest specifically, even though they have been actively practicing for UIL meets.

“I just wanted to see how we compared with the team from Needville,” Morris said. “Needville beat us at State last year by a few points. At Code Wars this year, our teams got 35, 19, and 19 points. Needville got 48 so we have some work to do.”

The team works hard year-round to improve their scores  – both during class and outside of school.

“We’ve practiced every day since my freshman year,” Myles said.

Even though the team did not win the programming side of the contest, two students did win door prizes. Martin won a gaming laptop worth around $2,000 and King won a $50 gift card to Amazon.

Morris said he is hopeful the team can prepare better for next year’s Code Wars contest and improve the team’s scores.

“I think we have a team that could do very well there but we would have to practice specifically for Code Wars,” Morris said. “The questions are different than the type of questions we encounter at UIL competitions. Last year, La Grange beat us at Code Wars, but we were able to eliminate them at the Regional UIL contest. The only time we could see Needville this year is at the State Meet. So hopefully the scores this year are not a good prediction of what will happen at State.”

The team’s next competition will be the District UIL meet on Saturday, March 25 at Hamshire-Fannett High School.