Messiah College Programming Team

Messiah College’s programming team, consisting of students Michael Adams, Anthony Spargo, and Zachary Felix, has pulled off another impressive computer programming contest victory this weekend. The Dickinson College Programming Contest is a four-hour competition that hosts 20 teams from 9 different schools in a race to solve eight complex computer programming problems. Our team solved 7 of 8 problems, more than any other team, earning them first place, a commemorative plaque, and Amazon.com gift certificates. A second team from Messiah, consisting of students Avery deGruchy (’14), Matt Guzick (’14), and Nathan Chaney (’15), also did well, solving 3 problems and earning 9th place. Both teams from Messiah had the remarkable achievement of getting all their problems right on the first try.

Thanks to our team’s great performance in November, the ACM has official invited our team to Warsaw Poland in May for the ACM world finals. This is a wonderful opportunity for our students and our school to show off our abilities and be recognized for the great academic program we have. In addition, the University of Chicago has invited us to compete in a special warm-up competition for qualifying North American schools in April. Great and exciting things are happening!

On November 5, Messiah College sent two teams of programmers to Shippensburg University to compete in the Regional Contest. The contest is a five-hour event where teams are given a packet of eight algorithm problems and given a single computer to enter a computer program that can solve the problem. Teams are scored based on the number of problems solved and how quickly they are solved.

The Falcons Blue team, composed of Junior Computer Science students Anthony Spargo and Mike Adams, and First-Year-Student Zachary Felix, solved four problems, earning them FIRST place among the 23 teams competing at Shippensburg, and THIRD place among the 168 teams competing simultaneously throughout the multi-state Mid-Atlantic Region, surpassed only by Duke University and College of William and Mary.

Messiah competed in the Mid-Atlantic region with schools like Bucknell University, University of Virginia, Johns Hopkins University, Elizabethtown College, University of Maryland, Dickinson University and Temple University among others (See ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest Teams list [http://cm.baylor.edu/public/report/teamsWF.icpc]).

“It was an exciting contest to watch”, reports team coach Jason Long. “When Falcons Blue got their third problem correct half-way into the contest, I knew we had a chance of winning. I am proud of both our teams’ performances.”