——By Luke Lee ‘20
On Friday, April 5th, six St. Markers drove to New York City early in the morning to participate in the Cornell High School Programming Contest. The contest started at 11 in the morning, so they had to head out early. “I was so tired. I usually don’t wake up that early.” Ryan Paik recalled. Although they were tired because they woke up so early, the St. Markers were excited and thrilled to enter the competition. It was the first time to enter this competition for all of them. They had no idea what to expect. But they knew they could perform because they had worked hard in Mr. Roche’s class throughout the school year.
There were two teams representing the Lions: the C++ team and the Java team. The C++ team was: Ryan Paik ‘20, Jason Chen ‘20, and Ryan Song ‘20. The Java team was: Alan Gao ‘19, Chapin Pyne ‘20, and Carl Guo ‘21.
When they got to Cornell around 11, they checked in at the reception and had lunch. At 11:45, they all gathered with all the other teams for introduction, where they were told about the guidelines and rules of the contest. The contest began at 12:30 and was held for three hours until 3:30. After the long contest, the teams had a break until 4:15, when the Awards Ceremony began.
St. Mark’s came back with impressive results. There were 66 teams in total from Northeast. And of those teams, the C++ team came in 2nd, while the Java team came in 6th. Mr. Roche was very impressed with both teams, “They took their day. Only one other team from New York had a better score than them [C++team].” Congrats to both teams for their impressive results on the contest!