When the call went out from the Mathematics & Statistics Department at the start of the term for any Year 10 girls interested in a beginners' programming competition, 30 keen students applied. A short logic test and a few tough decisions later, two teams of two were formed: Avondale 1 consisting of Seo-Lin Cho and Feiyang Wu, and Avondale 2 consisting of Demelza Colaco and Waimarie Ned-Senior. Unfortunately, Waimarie had to pull out shortly before the competition date, and Amanda Ruddell was able to step in, working extremely hard to catch up on her understanding of programming in Python.
The girls put in tremendous number of hours preparing for the competition, alongside their studying for exams. The shutdown of the University of Auckland due to the Covid-19 case in the city meant that at the last minute, the event was run instead at Avondale College on the Tuesday, where the teams synched up with 53 other secondary school teams based at Auckland schools and universities around the country. The four girls spent Tuesday morning fine-tuning their programming skills before the two hour competition in the afternoon. Midway, Avondale 1 was placed 6th and Avondale 2 was placed 9th. The girls then had an amazing second hour to pull off a 2nd and 3rd place finish respectively!
The Mathematics Department commends the hard work and endeavour of Seo-Lin, Feiyang, Demelza and Amanda - and especially congratulates Seo-Lin and Feiyang on being one of only two teams to complete the final question successfully. Finally, a huge thank you to Mr J Clark and Ms G Augustin for giving up multiple lunch times and free periods to help teach the girls their programming skills.
- Mr P Boardman, Mathematics Department
Avcol programmers: Seo-Lin Cho, Demelza Colaco and Amanda Ruddell. (Not pictured: Feiyang Wu)