In competition, time is of the essence. 

Once the USB is plugged in, it is time to begin.

As a team, they work together to resolve solutions and create intricate strands of code. Everything requires extensive knowledge and practical experience, but that is the least of their worries. 

All of the hours of practice has led to them this moment. 

The computer science team has consistently outperformed their competition across the state and plans to sweep the leaderboard at the district Academic UIL tournament on April 2. 

“[My favorite experience is] definitely going to meets with my team,” senior Kaitlyn Tyk said. “The team is all really close and have developed strong relationships with one another, so I always look forward to spending time with them and competing alongside them.”

For most, computer science is a foreign language credit and/or a technology credit. However, for the UIL computer science team, computer science has been a passion that has only expanded since joining Computer Science 1 freshman year. 

“I signed up for computer science because I’ve had an interest in it from a very young age,” senior Rehder Myhre said. “I would always toy around with computers and this was the logical next step. I’d probably say I became interested around three or four-years-old.”

Through Academic UIL, contestants have the opportunity to expand the knowledge they learned in class by competing with students from other schools. Each contest consists of two parts: individual test scores on a 40-question multiple-choice packet and a team effort with 12 coding problems. 

“When approaching a new problem, our strategy isn’t to just jump straight to the computer and go for it, but rather think of how we can simplify the problem down into simpler problems and approach those,” senior Jaedon Cox said. 

By working together, the computer science team collaborates and offers several solutions to the same problem. The variety in opinion and thought speeds up the process in the timed programming section of the test. 

“My favorite memory so far from this year has to be at the Whitehouse Invitational,” Cox said. “In the programming section there was a problem that required us to use an unfamiliar class within Java, so we started messing with the class and figured out a solution by searching through the computer.”

Whether as a major or a marketable skill in another career field, the computer science team plans on continuing the knowledge that they learned in class and in competitions after high school. The school offers Computer Science I and II along with AP Computer Science Principles and AP Computer Science.

“In order to write a genuine string of code, you need to know so much going into it,” Tyk said. “What each line requires, what you can and can’t establish things as, etc. Learning something new in this field requires a lot of research — books, videos, articles, and even whole practices sometimes.”

Under the direction of UIL coach and coordinator Colin Yeilding, the computer science team travels all over Texas to compete with a variety of competitors across the state in preparation for region and state competitions. 

“I’ve traveled all over the state of Texas for competitions,” senior Jaxon Dial. “We’ve gone to invitationals in Carthage, College Station and Houston. The regional competition is in Lubbock and the state competition is in Austin.”

At regional, the team that earns the highest overall score receives a bid to the state tournament. In 5A Region 1, the computer science team’s biggest competition is Grapevine and Lubbock. Every week, they devote hours of practice several times outside of school and in class to improving their teammate skills and individual knowledge. 

“Taking computer science now helps me by familiarizing myself with coding in general and the Java language,” Hossain said. “By being in computer science UIL, it allows me to improve my teamwork abilities by working with my teammates.”