Westminster College's Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, in conjunction with Westminster's Admissions Office, hosted its annual high school programming contest Oct. 24.

Nine teams from three area high schools worked over two hours on six computer programming problems.  Students submitted solutions and received feedback from the judges electronically, while an electronic score sheet displayed updated results throughout the contest.  Scoring for each problem was based on the elapsed time as well as the number of incorrect submissions.

Participating high schools and their coaches were: Blackhawk High School coached by Jim Cox; North Allegheny High School coached by Laura Prosser; and Seneca Valley High School coached by Diane Krauland.

Blackhawk Team 3 captured first place with members Jacob Cruzan, Christian Gesina, Jesse Groom, and Nick Rome.  

Second place was awarded to North Allegheny Team 1 whose team members included Mark Freithaler, Sean Geng, Ricky Kotermanski, and Dominic LaBella.  Freithaler, Kotermanski, and LaBella were on last year's second place team.

Third place was earned by Blackhawk Team 1 with team members Clint Davies, Elena Iannuzzi, Tyler Tracy, and Dan Warnaka.

The contest was designed and supervised by Dr. John Bonomo, Westminster associate professor of computer science.  Bonomo is active in organizing and contributing problems to programming contests.  He has served as head judge for the ACM East Regional Programming Contest since 2000 and as a judge and problem contributor for international competitions for the past 10 years.  His most recent competitions were Banff, Canada, in 2008; Stockholm, Sweden, in 2009; Harbin, China, in 2010; and Orlando in May.

Bonomo was assisted by Dr. David Shaffer, Westminster associate professor of computer science, as well as Westminster junior computer science and mathematics major Anthony Caratelli.

Caratelli is a son of Arthur and Lesa Caratelli of Darlington and a graduate of Blackhawk High School.

Contact Bonomo at (724) 946-7287 or email for additional information.

First place: (seated, l-r) Coach Jim Cox, Dr. John Bonomo. (Standing, l-r) Jesse Groom, Nick Rome, Jacob Cruzan, Christian Gesina

Second place: (seated) Coach Laura Prosser, Dr. Bonomo. (Standing, l-r) Sean Geng, Ricky Kotermanski, Dominic LaBella, Mark Freithaler

Third place: (seated, l-r) Coach Cox, Dr. Bonomo. (Standing, l-r) Clint Davies, Tyler Tracy, Elena Iannuzzi, Dan Warnaka