Beginning in 2007, the UIL Computer Science team at Randall has been operating for 15 years. The excellent teacher/organizer of UIL CS is Mrs. Srygley. She’s been teaching computer science at Randall for five years. On top of computer science (Honors, AP, and III), she teaches College Readiness Math and Robotics. The team she leads consists of five students: Megan Brue, Hudson Cox, Kaden Frisk, Lukas Spears, and Aidan Poole. Brue has been in UIL CS for three years, Cox and Poole have been members for two, and it’s Spears’ and Frisk’s first year. Last year’s team consisted of Alillery Acosta, Megan Brue, Hudson Cox, Hayden Hoppe, Alex Lancaster, and Aidan Poole.

UIL CS has two parts to its competition: a written test taken by four members of the team and a coding section taken by three members of the team. The written exam is 40 questions long and tests the student’s knowledge of programming in Java (a programming language) at a College Freshman level. 37 of those questions are multiple-choice while the last three are open-ended. Every correctly answered question scores six points, every incorrectly answered question deducts two points, and any question left unanswered scores zero points. The top three scores from each team are tallied up to generate a team score before the next section’s scores are also added. The three highest-scoring individuals advance in the individual portion of the competition. This is how individuals advance to state.

The second part of the competition is an hour-and-half long. Three team members are given 12 coding problems. They must write code to complete tasks and generate output given by the problems. Once completed, the team prints their output on paper and gives their code to an administrator that checks if all tasks have been completed and if the output matches a key. If all is done correctly, the team is awarded 60 points. If the tasks were performed incorrectly and the output does not match, the possible score the team can get for that problem is decreased by five. For example, a team completes a problem, checks their work with an admin, and their work is incorrect. They refine their code, check with an admin, and everything is now correct. The team is now awarded 55 points, not 60. The scores for the coding section and the written test section are added together resulting in the team’s total score. Unsolved problems do not affect scores, much like the written exam portion.

The UIL CS team hopes to make state this year, now that Randall is competing in the 4A division.

“Our competition is much lower and our scores are much higher this year,” Srygley stated. “Our current average scores should relatively easily advance us to state. That’s even without our team learning a fourth of what’s on the test.”

As the students learn more, take more practice tests, and code more, their scores increase dramatically. The students are capable of placing sixth or seventh, compared to last year’s state final scores.