Winners announced in 5th coding contest

Students from the Don Tyson School of Innovation in Springdale won first place Saturday in the fifth annual Governor's All-State Coding Competition held at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Team members Lucas Kellar, Luke Lyons and Drake Mayes each received a 529 college savings plan prize worth $2,000.

Rogers New Technology High School students received second place and a team from eSTEM High School in Little Rock received the third-place honor. Ashley Kincannon, a teacher at Lake Hamilton Junior High School, was selected from among five finalists to be the 2021 Arkansas Computer Science Educator of the Year.

"For the fifth straight year, this competition has inspired impressive solutions from Arkansas' top computer science students," Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in announcing the winners. "Their work reinforces my confidence that these students will be more than well prepared to take the reins of leadership. When you consider the caliber of the five teachers we recognized, it's no surprise that we are seeing this excellence in our computer science students."

Rogers New Technology High School students Joshua Willard, Aldan Garner and David Daniel each received a 529 college savings plan prize worth $1,000 and Little Rock's eSTEM High students Elijah Keen, Spencer Knight and Sergio Markin each received a 529 college savings plan prize worth $500.

In addition to the individual awards, winning schools received $10,000, $6,000, and $4,000, respectively, to support their computer science programs.

Kincannon received $12,500 award from the Arkansas Department of Education's Office of Computer Science for receiving the top teacher honor. She and the other four finalists also received $2,500 prizes.

Those finalists are Carl Frank, Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts; Kimberly Raup, Conway High School; Stacy Reynolds, McGehee High School; and Lauren Taylor, Dardanelle High School.

Since the contest's 2016 inaugural year, Verizon has provided $225,000 in financial support for the competition. More than 100 teams from across the state participated in this year's digital regional competition. The top 16 teams from that regional event, along with a team from last year's first-place school, received invitations to compete in the 2021 competition.

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