Bethel College student programmers had another successful outing in an annual regional competition at Emporia State University.
Bethel sent seven students on three teams to compete in the North Central Region of the International Collegiate Programming Contest, sponsored by the Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) and IBM. The contest took place simultaneously on Oct. 31 at 15 sites in the region consisting of Iowa, Kansas, Manitoba, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, western Ontario, South Dakota and Wisconsin.
Bethel competed against teams from Baker University, Emporia State and Kansas State University. The Bethel team named “Threshers” — Kyle Claassen, senior from Andover, Matthew Hershberger, senior from Clay Center, and Lucas Stertz, sophomore from Lincoln — finished first, solving three of 10 problems with a total time of 326 minutes, good for 42nd place regionally in a field of 203 teams.
Michael Linscheid, junior from Reedley, Calif., and Benjamin Stucky, junior from Moon Township, Pa., the Bethel team named “Greys,” solved two problems with a total time of 312 minutes, placing 62nd overall. Isaac Olson, senior from Denver, and Calvin Wenger, senior from Hesston, the “Maroons,” solved two problems with a total time of 366 minutes, good for 75th place overall. Among the Kansas schools, Bethel’s overall finish placed them second behind Kansas State.
Claassen and Olson competed in the contest for the third time. It was a second outing for Hershberger and Linscheid.
“This is the first time in my memory that all of our teams have successfully solved at least one problem,” said Karl Friesen, assistant professor of computer science. “This year’s problem set was also more difficult overall than last year's problem set.”
Unofficial results are at www.cs.unomaha.edu/~acmregn/rankorder.html.
