Solving programming problems in the fastest time possible was the challenge in front of seven of Kathy Ricketts’ students who attended the High School Design Competition at the University of Kansas on Wednesday.

“Basically it was an engineering contest at KUS where there’s a bunch of different events,” senior Max Kokene said. “There’s, like, building stuff, programming, which was the competition I was in.”

The students were divided into two teams, both in the advanced programming portion of the contest, competing from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

“Depending on how fast they solve the problems and if they got it correct, partially correct, depending on how many points they got, that puts them into a ranking,” Kathy Ricketts, business and media teacher, said. Ricketts was also the sponsor of the trip.

Scholarships are given to those who place, but unfortunately none of the Manhattan High competitors placed.

“I think the first or second place winners of a lot of the different types of the contest had scholarships offered,” Kokenge said.

With this being the first year for some student and others having more experience, the students managed to come out with a positive attitude even though they didn’t place.

“They learned a lot about a… they should’ve studied more, should’ve practiced more, that there’s a lot more that they should learn before going to the contest,” Ricketts said. “It was a good learning experience for them, and they came out with a positive attitude, so they did a good job.”

After the contest was over, the students had the options of going and touring the KU engineering department, watching other competitions or stuffing their faces with free pizza.

“The best part of the contest I think was just having the students, the competition with the different programming levels,” Ricketts said, “Both teams were both in the advanced portion of the contest, so the problems were a lot more challenging to solve. Just working together as a team, and doing the best they could do.”